Wednesday night I was
sound asleep when I heard a goat scream, and I do mean SCREAM, from the pen in the side yard. Before I was fully awake, I had flipped on
the outside lights and grabbed my bathrobe, clogs and flashlight and was
sprinting for the back door. It was the
pen with Little One (the Boer goat) and her two baby does, Cookie and
Blaze. By the time I got to the pen, it
was only Little One and Blaze…. no Cookie.
Uh oh.
This
was not the first baby goat we had lost, which is why I was moving at warp 10
to get outside. About 4 weeks earlier,
the weekend before Easter to be exact, my two older children were home “farm
sitting” for me while Katherine and I attended a goat show. Saturday evening, Charlie (age 19, aka child
#1) called and said my Cattle Dog was acting kind of weird. Charlie likes animals well enough, but I
wouldn’t go so far as to say he loves them.
I was just pleased that he remembered the dog’s name and had some idea
of what “normal” was for him. The dog
started having seizures while Charlie was on the phone with me, so he picked up
the dog and loaded him into my brand new Subaru.
I
like my dog well enough, but the idea of putting a seizing dog in my brand new,
clean car with buttery soft tan leather was not particularly appealing. Katherine and I had the Suburban with us to
tow the trailer and Bella (child #2, age 17) had driven the kid-mobile Hyundai
to the gym (as usual). No choice. “Put a
blanket down,” I recommended optimistically.
Charlie
also does not know his way around our county because I moved up here around the
time that he went off to boarding school five years ago. And of course this veterinary emergency happens
on a Saturday evening when the normal vet is CLOSED. Thank god for cars with navigation systems. Charlie got the dog to the vet in
lickety-split time, before the dog could infuse my car with his special
aroma. Turns out the dog “got into
something” and stayed at the vet overnight.
He was perfectly fine the next morning.
That’s a Cattle Dog for you.
Meanwhile,
back at the goat show, I was sitting with a veterinarian friend of mine and asked
him what could be wrong with my dog. Rattlesnake bite? I have seen rattlers in
the yard (eek). Mushrooms? Haven’t seen any.
Would a citronella candle do that, I asked? No. And then my friend put it out there: “Could
he have gotten into marijuana?” The
light bulbs went off in my head like fireworks.
Oh my god. I left two teenagers
home alone to feed my menagerie and one of them left a stash of pot out where
the dog could get it. All the symptoms
for “marijuana intoxication in cats and dogs” fit: anxiety, panting, agitation,
impaired balance, drooling, vomiting, diarrhea. Shazam!
Wait a minute, which
teenager? Really? Is something going on
here I should know about? I put on my best Stern Mom voice and called Charlie
right back and posed the question. He
answered calmly, “not me.” Ok, what
about your sister? “Hmm,” he pondered.
Since she was still at the gym, I texted her – no answer. Whatev’.
The
next morning Charlie got out of bed at 7 am (a miracle) to drive back over the hill to pick
up the dog before the vet charged me another day. That’s my boy. The dog came home in the kid-mobile this time
and was none the worse for the wear.
Just a little shaved patch on his leg where the IV had been.
I
asked Charlie to look around outside and see if he could find anything (like a
pot stash…) that would have sickened my dog.
He did not. But he did find the
back gate open. We don’t use our back
gate. It’s just there for access to the
creek behind our house, and it’s exceptionally hard to open and close. So why was it open? A few minutes later, Bella texted me: “Mom we are missing a
goat.” What?! I told her to look in all
the usual place: inside the hay barn between the bales, inside the shed in the
corner behind the grain can, back corner of the overhang. Nothing. Nada. Gone. This was not good. Then I remembered that the back gate had
been open. It was getting worse.
Katherine,
being the Internet whiz that she is, got on her iPhone and started tapping
away. Her face turned paler than usual
and she said, “Some people eat tender baby goats for Easter… which is next
week.” A picture flashed through her
imagination and mine at precisely the same moment. We lost a young goat last year, too, the week
before Cinco de Mayo, but back then we decided to just not think about it.
(Bubba was still around and that was his preferred course of action for all
unpleasant topics.) People eat goat at
that holiday, too. And maybe the dog’s
sudden illness was connected to this as well –
poison?? sedatives?? It all made sense.
This
revelation rattled me for so many reasons, including the idea that someone came
onto my property in the middle of the night and stole from me – maybe twice
even. I am a single woman living alone
with a pack of kids in the boonies. This
development was unsettling to say the least.
As
soon as I got home, I installed locks on all the gates and motion sensor lights
around the property, and called the fence guy to come raise the fence
ASAP. In the meantime, I came down with
poison oak from stomping around on the other side of the fence looking for
tracks. As you will soon see, the poison
oak was pure Karma for saying mean things about people who steal goats.
Flash
forward four weeks, to a Wednesday night, and there I was sprinting out of my
bed determined to catch the thieves RED HANDED! Ah hah! I got outside and it was unnaturally still
and quiet. The thief could not have
gotten away that fast. He would have had
to stumble along carrying 40 pounds of goat through the dry and rocky creek
that borders my property. I checked all
the places Cookie could be. Little One (aka mama) looked confused and distraught, staring at me as if to say “Fix it,
woman.” Blaze, the last surviving
triplet, was agitated because of her distraught mama. Well, damn.
I went
inside and woke up Katherine. It was
1:20 am and only 10 minutes had passed since the initial scream. She got her flashlight and boots and did all
the same things I had just done. Also,
to no avail. We stood at the fence,
which is way too low – 4 feet; I really should’ve nagged the fence guy harder
those last few weeks. Coulda shoulda woulda. We were looking for tracks or hair or
something. I shone my light across the
creek onto the woody hillside that backs up to my property and there they were:
beady little eye shining red in my flashlight beam. They were staring right back at me.
Oh, please dear god,
let that be a raccoon. I kept the light
on it steadily and it glanced away, flashing its kitty cat ears at me. Then I saw the black and white lump of what
used to be my goat, Cookie, between its front legs. The beast looked back at me. I saw a nose this time and some tan fur. “Um, Katherine, do you see this? What do you
think it is?” Please say raccoon. “Mom, that’s a mountain lion and it’s eating
Cookie.” Yup. That’s what I didn’t want to hear.
I
was still shining my flashlight on it trying to scare it away. I was irritated that it was eating my baby
goat. Very irritated. I was quite sure it would be scared of ME and
run off. So I stood my ground – with my
flashlight. Come here kitty and I’ll…
whack you with my big flashlight. Take
that! “Mom, you are provoking it. Stop
it!” Katherine hissed at me. “Back away
slowly right now and come inside.” She’s
such an old soul and so wise, and I really do appreciate her. But I wanted to scare off that monster. Grr. After
a few long seconds, I realized that she was absolutely right.
At
8:00 am, I was driving carpool and leaving a message for the “Predatory Animal
Control Office” to get someone to fix this problem. Then I drove to San Francisco to meet with my
top-tier attorney to sign my trust modification and estate planning documents. Of course the trapper called me just as I was
about to go in to my meeting. I took the
call even though my attorney charges by the minute, because, damn it, I wanted
that mountain lion dead. The cell phone
coverage was miserable in the high-rise lobby, so I paced around trying to find
a good spot and yelled at the phone, “A mountain lion ate my goat. I saw it
with my own eyes. Can you come kill it??...No, don’t relocate it, kill
it!” Well-dressed people glanced up from
their smart phones to stare at the crazy lady.
 |
| The Lobby |
The
trapper came to the house and, with the help of my detail-oriented child (Katherine),
located the mangled carcass of the goat formerly known as Cookie. The mountain lion had covered it up with some
leaves and stuff, which, the trapper told me, meant the cougar was coming back
to finish eating it. We made a plan for
the trapper to return at dusk and stake out the evil feline to kill it. He arrived at the appointed hour and set up
his lawn chair on the bank of the creek, and I locked up my dogs and children.
All
night long, I tossed and turned waiting to hear the POP of his gun. No luck.
He left quietly in the morning and when I checked in with him later in
the day he said the mountain lion didn’t come back after all. We could move the carcass to the pen and try
to lure the mountain lion back but he wasn’t optimistic about that
approach.
So
we talked about what I should do: raise the fence another 2-3 feet and run a
“hot wire” across the top. I should also
get some ammo for my guns and some “Livestock Guardian Dogs.” This brings me to a salient point: how
effective did I really think I was going to be with only a flashlight? I would’ve died with an incorrect will (since
I wouldn’t have gotten to my meeting the next day to sign my revised will) and
my obit would read, “Mother of 7 Mauled To Death by Mountain Lion.”
Before
Bubba moved out, we had amassed a stockpile of ammo – all kinds of ammo. He had read somewhere that the government was going to
make it impossible to buy any ammo in the future, so we had better buy it every
time we saw it for sale. In fact, I
believe we even had some ammo that didn’t fit any guns either of us owned. When he moved out, he took ever last box of
it – just in case the government really did make it illegal to buy ammo. Right. Anyway, I now have an arsenal of useless machinery locked in a safe in my garage
– with my will. Note to self: buy ammo.
Katherine
was on a mission to solve this predator problem. She logged on to “Goat Forum” (one of her
personal favorites - www.thegoatspot.net) and queried the population of goat herders. She received a wide range of advice from
“hire a trapper,” to what kind of dog would be best. My favorite advice was “Shoot, Shovel, Shut
Up.” Note to self: buy ammo. Katherine determined that we needed a pair of "Livestock Guardian Dogs."
…to
be continued
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| Little One and Blaze |
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