Wildlife

I feel like I'm camping every night. I've been waking up, listening to the pitter patter of little mousefeet in the walls (and some pitter pattering not in the walls), and Jacob, the poor dear, wakes up every morning with a new spider bite. This morning I discovered that the leftover apple pie I made was invaded by ants--the little black ones that my dad calls piss-ants--and, being too aware of global hunger to feel I could throw it away, I just tried to pick them off the best I could. Do you have any idea how impossible it is not to leave even a few crumbs around, especially living with a male?

This morning one of the baby goats got out of the fence. It was inevitable really. It was one of the saanens, of course. Saanens are very interesting goats. They are generally larger than other breeds, more sociable, smarter (I say generally because I know some tremendously stupid saanens), and better milk producers. Well, this saanen crawled beneath the fence and stood in the middle of our driveway, crying loudly until we came outside. It obviously wanted us to know that it had foiled our plans to keep it in the pasture. I suppose there were some tasty plants it wanted to exploit outside the pasture, or maybe goats really are as devious as I imagine them to be, and it just wanted to trouble us. Anyways, we surrounded it, and Jacob managed to grab one of its hind legs. I carried it up the driveway to the truck, feeling like Heidi and wishing my camera worked, and we put it in the back to take it back down the hill to the entrance of the pasture. It was really charming. I imagine that after the 100th goat gets out it is no longer charming, but I can see why you'd want to have goats. They're quite remarkable.