Boy goats

Dan as a lad.

Kentucky in more innocent days.

You learn something about the earthy roots of the English language when you spend time around farm animals. You're idly observing your chickens one day and suddenly a lightbulb goes off about some dumb phrase you've thoughtlessly used all your life: Rules the roost, pecking order, hen-pecked, flew the coop, clipped her wings. For a while I kept a list, and it was long.

One day I was watching our goat Peppermint after a meal as she went around kicking her heels into the air and I thought, she's really feeling her oats. Ding!

I took the goats up to be bred today and I won't see them again until 2011. I've spent time with bulls and tomcats and unneutered male dogs, but nothing had prepared me for the sheer goatishness of a full grown buck goat. You could smell these dudes from fifty feet away and they did not look like the sweet pictures above.

They looked more like this:

Except they had their tongues stuck out and were making crazy noises. We put Natalie and Peppermint in with the boys and as I walked away Dan was already humping Peppermint while she wailed and tried to squeeze through a 4-inch hole in the stock panel. I felt a little bad. I know it's natural and all and this is the price we pay for cheese and baby goats and life itself, but Dan and Kentucky were acting like a couple of nasty old goats.