On a foggy Tuesday morning I was meeting with a client,
stomping through weeds and rubble, when my phone started blowing up with
texts from Katherine. Of course I could
not look at my phone – because that would be unprofessional and I am a
professional. So when I got back to the
car I read through the messages and learned all about the emergency with Katrina the goat.
Katrina was a four-year
old La Mancha goat that Katherine had purchased as part of her “comic relief”
herd diversification program. This
breed of dairy goat was “first bred in [Glide] Oregon, by Mrs. Eula May Frey” in
the 1930s. The first officially
recognized La Mancha was named “Fay’s Ernie” in 1958. (I love Wikipedia.) They are known for their “distinctive,” “very
short ear pinnae.” Translation: they
have no ears. Well, just the outside
part of the ear – they have ear canals and can hear just fine. Supposedly, these goats don’t do well in cold
climates because their ear canals get cold.
Of course they do. I can find
absolutely no purpose for this ear thing, other than humans like to see how far
they can manipulate the appearance of animals.
Here’s Eula in a parade with a couple of her goats:
I personally thought this goat was creepy with her deformed ears and blank expression. Katherine had researched the breed thoroughly, and found Katrina on Craig’s List (again). We brought the goat home in the back of the Suburban (again). I guess I was still trying to assuage my guilty conscience by buying random goats for my child.
The very day Katrina came home, she was quarantined away from the other animals and the vet drew blood and mailed
the sample to the University of Washington to get tested for a myriad of goat
plagues: Johnes, CL, and CAE. This
testing is standard procedure in our herd, because once any of these scourges
comes onto your property your herd is doomed, DOOMED I say. (Can you believe that some people actually do
not test? Sacre bleu. More on that topic another time. UPDATE JANUARY 2017: People still don't test! NOT us though; we test every 6 months like clockwork. Thank you very much.)
Katrina’s results came back positive for CL, which stands for
“Caseous Lymphadenitis.” The common name
for this disease is “Cheesy Gland,” “Contagious Abscesses,” or, simply, boils. This highly contagious bacterial disease
infects the lymph glands and can also infect internal organs, causing chronic
wasting (think holocaust goats).
It is spread by soil
contamination. “And just how might the
soil become contaminated?” you ask.
Well, these “cheesy” abscesses blow up like balloons and explode—POP—all
over the place. Once the pus hits the
ground, you are screwed.
Katrina originally came from a dairy farm, where they frequently
vaccinate against this disease.
Katherine rationalized that perhaps the blood test was reading
antibodies from a prior vaccination. The
goat looked healthy, so we went with it.
Four months later, Katherine was on Spring Break and was
feeding the herd and loving them up as she does every day. I guess it was about 9:00 am. She spotted a bitty lump on Katrina’s
lymph node and Katherine sprang into action, starting with sending me twelve
texts (REMINDER: this disease doesn't spread until that lump pops and oozes pus into the ground--horizontal contamination--so we were up against the clock to get the goat OFF THE PROPERTY before it started oozing contaminants).
We had a choice: 1) pay $400 to have the vet put the goat down
and the haulers cart her away, 2) pay $150 to have the vet put the goat down
and then we cart her away ourselves (in the back of the Suburban), or 3) we
sell the goat at the livestock auction yard real quick before the lump got
bigger and more suspicious looking. By
10:30 Katherine and I had heaved all 130 lbs of Katrina (very much alive) into
the back of the Suburban (again). Auction
yard here we come.
On the way over, we devised a plan to explain why were selling
the goat. I would play angry mom: “I’m
not taking care of your damned animal any more.
It has to go!” I would screech
and Katherine would cry. We practiced a
couple times until we had it down pat.
I had been to the Auction Yard once
before with Bubba to dispose of a dead goat. The place has a myriad of functions, including “livestock carcass
disposal.” You pay $50 in the office,
back up your truck to a three-sided shed with a pit at the back, and push the
carcass into the abyss where it lands on top of the heap of other dead
livestock. You can only hope that the
pit is not near capacity when you get there. When it’s full to overflowing, the auction
yard ships the contents off to a “renderer” in Turlock. According to Wikipedia, “Rendering is a process that converts waste animal tissue into stable, value-added materials.” Just remember that definition. I’ll get back to it.
Katherine and I pulled up at 11:00 am. A couple of trucks sat
in the otherwise empty parking lot. We reviewed
our plan one last time, and went inside.
The room was dusty and dimly lit; zydeco music played in the background
(no joke). Three doors and one cashier’s
window serviced the various functions of the building: auction yard/livestock
carcass removal, rest room, day care, and hot dog stand. We only needed the auction yard, thank you.
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| Roy's Chicago Dogs at the Yard |
I approached the counter and greeted the young man tasked with
manning the fort. “I’d like to sell my
goat,” I stated. Start with the basics and
go from there, I thought to myself.
Katherine was behind me, gearing up to cry. “Sure, how big a chute do you need to unload
it?” he asked. Hmm. What was he saying? Katherine shrugged. “Well, I guess she weighs about 130 pounds. Katherine and I managed to get her loaded by
ourselves.” This time the man looked
confused. “She’s in my car,” I said,
pointing out to my gleaming white Suburban in the parking lot.
In silence, Katherine and I drove around to the side of the
building and backed the SUV up to the pen area.
I hit the automatic tailgate opener on my key fob (remember now, this is
a LUXURY goat mobile) and the tailgate slowly rose to reveal Katrina lying in
the back of my car, on a tarp, chewing her cud. Katherine tugged the lead rope and Katrina
hopped out of the car (who needs no stinkin’ chute?). The young man opened the yard gate and
directed us to an empty pen. Well,
actually, all the pens were empty because it was the day AFTER the auction. Plenty to choose from. I filled out the sales form: name and
address. No phone number, no reason, no
minimum price. He glanced at it, wrote
“1 Goat” on it and handed me my copy.
That was it. No questions
asked. No vet check. He didn’t even look at the goat. Alrighty then. Katherine and I got back into the Chevy
and left in silence.
We have a policy in my family that you can’t say something bad
about a place if you are still at the place or within earshot of it. My ex-husband and I started this policy about
15 years ago when we were interviewing at kindergartens for our oldest
son. We didn’t want to get “black
balled” in the highly competitive private school application process because
someone overheard us saying something snarky about a school.
So Katherine and I waited until we drove over the highway
overpass before even exhaling. “Lets go to lunch,” I said. “There’s a good
sushi restaurant nearby.” No hot dogs
for us.
Two weeks later a check for $130 arrived in the mail for the proceeds
of selling “1 goat” at auction.
Good bye Katrina.
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