The Goat Who Wore a Tire and the Horse Who Chased Her

Old McDonald had a farm. Ei ei o. And on this farm he had...

I would say that my mom sang that song a lot. Because we could certainly sing it for many verses due to all the varieties of animals she put on our farm. Let me see, in the years we lived on the farm we went through different phases. There was the period we had goats, sheep, chickens, turkeys, ducks and a few rabbits. Then we added bandy chickens, more ducks and more rabbits, bummer steers, oh yes and pigs.

Then my aunt and uncle somehow had a horse that they couldn't take care of even though they had the same sized property that we had. So we got him. He was a huge bay horse named George. Then a friend, in town, won a pony at the fair and had nowhere to keep him, so we got him. He was a white Shetland Pony named Charley. We also had cats, dogs, tropical fish and parakeets.

Then Mom added way more rabbits as in more than 300 and then struck pay dirt, the worms under the rabbits sold the best. That's when I realized that she was trying to make the farm pay. From the stories she told I'd just figured she was just adding animals to add animals. So, I'm telling this story from my perspective. I'm telling about some of the different animals that she kept adding to our farm.

Some of the animals on our farm truly stood out way above the rest.

The first one that really sticks in my memory is Star. She was a white Nubian goat. But you couldn't tell her that. We tried, over and over and over. But as far as she was concerned she was family. Her ears didn't flop forward as was normal for a Nubian. They were folded back behind her head as fitted her cocky personality.

She refused to stay in the barnyard. It didn't matter how "escape proof" we made the barnyard, she was always outside the fence. We'd catch her climbing under and over the fence. She even went through the fence. And other times she climbed up a tree and jumped over, or climbed up on an outbuilding and jumped over.

My mother solved the problem by putting a tire around the goat's middle. She could no longer escape. However, we ended up with a new problem. For some reason, George absolutely detested that combination and every time he saw the goat his eyes would flash red and he'd charge after that goat flying across the barnyard with the tire
around her middle.

This problem was finally solved when George went to a new home, since my mother couldn't get him to stop chasing that uppity goat with her tire tutu.

Another animal that really stays in my mind was the pony, Charlie. He was a young fully equipped stallion. We lived in farm country with plenty of horses around us, which were often being ridden down the street. Anytime a mare would go past our property he would go nuts and would charge the fence trying to get out.

We were all allowed to ride Charlie. However, I was the only one who was able to stay on him. My big brother was tossed off the first time and left in the neighbor's almond orchard. He never got back on. He didn't like Charlie. I never had a problem with Charlie. We had an agreement. I let him go where he wanted to go and he let me stay on, through my uncle's freshly planted walnut orchard, and my aunt's flower garden and over the railroad tracks to where I wasn't supposed to go.

One of the things I did was teach Charlie how to jump. We would repeatedly go over a fallen fence in one of the pastures until we got it right. Unfortunately he was an excellent student. Then when the mares were trotted by he's just jump over the gate and run after the mares.

My mother kept adding row upon row of barb wire at the top of the gate until it stood between 8 and 10 feet high. He never went over the fence, just the gate, maybe because it was on a clear road that was easy to run on. One day, we came out to find that he'd knocked the entire gate over. A neighbor with mares led him home with his horses. That's when my mom had the vet come out to geld Charley and his family sold him. I sure did miss him.

One year one of our ducks stopped sitting on her clutch of eggs. My mother listened to the eggs and found that they were alive, so she put them under a hen who was an excellent foster mom. She was so proud of her "chicks". She took them everywhere in the barnyard and carefully watched over them, attacking anyone who might threaten them.

Then one day, when they'd been hatched for a couple weeks, they discovered a mud puddle and proceeded to drown themselves. She was beside herself. she totally flipped out, jumping up in the air, screaming and cackling and running all around that puddle flapping her wings. Then her "chicks" all trooped out of their bath and went up to her to cuddle under her feathers. She hurried them away from that puddle as quickly as she could, clucking as she went.

Not too long after that my mom sold the farm and moved us into town. She gave all of our pets away or left them with the farm, so we went to a pet shop and bought our first store-bought cat, our first Siamese. I'd knelt over the cage that she and her litter mates were in. When she wrapped her paws around my knee we took her home. We named her Cindy Hot-rod because of the way she ran through the house.

She ricocheted, banking off the walls at a 45 degree angle. When she had a son, he tried to do the same thing. But he was a lot bigger and didn't have her talent. He would just plop on the floor in a furry pile.

We named him Rex. The only talents we knew him to have were: 1. Chasing the neighbor's dog down the street. Even though my mom found that mortifying, I thought it was very funny. 2. Hunting, when he left a dead gopher in the middle of my bed as a trophy. 3. Eating and comfort when he knocked over our garbage can, for food, sang over salad and marinated cucumbers and dragged my huge headed fox pj pillow up on my brother's bunk bed while we were gone for a week, so he could sleep with both of our scents.

That is, until he disappeared for over a week and all of the neighbors for blocks around came to see what had happened to him. We found out that our garbage can wasn't the only one that needed a brick or two on it to keep him out of it. He blackmailed all of the neighbors into feeding him, or he'd caterwaul at their back door and knock over the garbage can if they didn't feed him. He had a regular daily schedule where he'd hit up everyone of his "friends" for a meal.

When he returned home, not one ounce smaller, I'd say he found new neighbors to feed off of until he found his way home.

At one point we had to keep him in the house to put him on a diet since he could no longer get on the back of the toilet where we kept the cat food from the dogs. He was not a happy camper. But he did lose some weight before we let him back out to entertain all of his neighborly "friends".