Little Red Roses the goat, entered the world on the coldest day of the winter last year, her fate already sealed by her mother's decision to deliver her against a stone wall next to a small hole, through which a bitter cold wind howled its thirty-degree-below-zero fury.
By the time I discovered her some ten minutes after her birth, her ears were frozen all the way to the base of her head. Snatching her up and wrapping her shivering, seven-pound body in a towel, I hurried to the milk-house where I immersed her in a sink of warm water, trying to thaw her ears and warm her. As I lowered her into the sink, I heard an odd clunking sound. I felt along her hind leg and discovered it was frozen solid.
"Oh, no, baby, this isn't good," I told her.
After fifteen minutes of attempting to thaw the frozen limb, I gave up. Once we had her dry and warm, we put her in the heated trailer with the other newborn goat kids. She could walk but dragged the useless limb behind her. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.Red Roses grew right along with the other young goats, but her left hind leg did not. It shriveled up until it looked like a gnarled old piece of deadwood attached to the otherwise healthy young doe. It was hard to watch her trying to run and play with the others, and I wished a thousand times over I had found her earlier on that morning she was born.
"What are you going to do with her?" my husband asked, ever the practical farmer. "She won't be able to stand in a milking line, even if she does actually manage to breed."
I just grinned and said; "Guess she'll be a pet then."
He shook his head. "I figured that." He smiled as he walked away.
To our surprise, Red Roses did breed, and gave birth to a fine daughter in early February this year. My poor son, Sam, who was home alone when she delivered, saw the baby standing next to Red Roses and thought a coyote had attacked her and chewed off her leg, because of the bloody nature of birth, but that's another story.
Being different from the others didn't seem to bother Red Roses. She received a lot of attention from us as a baby, and became very tame. Oh, excuse me for a moment. Someone is tapping on my shoulder. It's Red Roses! She thinks she could tell her story better than I can. I'm really short of time, so I will let her take over from here.
Hello, my illustrious two-legged readers! This is "Gimpy" here. I know Mom refers to me as "Red Roses", but everyone in the barn calls me Gimpy, and if the shoe fits. . . . Wait, I don't wear shoes, but you get my drift! So anyway, I am Janilou's favorite herd goat. Every time she comes into the barn to drive the other girls to the holding area, I follow her as she walks to the far end of the pen and shoos the slowpokes along. I love to run around her in circles, showing how pleased I am that she worked so hard to save me when I was just a kid.
Then I follow her to the entrance of the holding pen and wait while Janilou closes the sliding door on the rest of the poor suckers, ahem, excuse me, I mean the rest of the does who have to wait their turn to enter the parlor and be milked.
Janilou and I walk right into the parlor together. I run down to the far end where there is a feed manger set up at ground level for special goats like me. She lets another 19 does into the parlor and we all get milked with the special machines Janilou calls "milkers". Ten minutes later we all leave through the exit door and head back to our barn to play and eat hay.
I should explain that Janilou is not my real mother. My real mother has four legs and a fur coat. Janilou has two legs and I have three, so I am stuck somewhere between being a real goat and a real person, but I don't mind a bit. The other day, I overheard Janilou telling the tall one she calls "Paul" that she has over 160 kids in the trailers right now. Personally, I think she is nuts. Who in their right mind wants to take care of 160 babies? Give me three or four any day!
She adopts all of our babies each year, so the older does tell me. We don't mind because it frees us up to spend our time doing important things, like eating hay and grain, playing "Queen of the Manure Pile" and sleeping. Oh, and milking of course! My fellow does and I are giving almost 5000 pounds of milk every four days right now. I like to stand on top of the manure pile and call out a greeting to the milk hauler man who drives his truck down the lane every Wednesday and Sunday to collect the milk. He isn't very friendly, though, because he never bleats back or lifts his hoof in greeting.
Which brings me to my final point. Janilou talks about me being disabled, but the poor thing is in denial herself. You should see Janilou's hooves. Instead of being cloven and nicely shaped, there are five odd-looking things protruding out where the hoof should be. Such a shame.She calls them fingers. I know that because one day she started leaping around doing a funny dance while we were milking and the tall one asked her what was wrong. She held up her hoof and said, "I jammed my finger." As if that's not bad enough, you should hear her try to talk goat. It's all we can do to keep a straight face when she tries to speak our language. Some of the younger goats crack up, but the older does say "hush" and remind them where their grain comes from.
I think I hear Janilou coming back up the stairs, so I'm signing off now. Besides, I need to talk to her about that wolf she has working here. She calls it a "sheep-dog", but we all know it's a wolf in sheep-dog clothing. Besides which, we are goats, not sheep! Poor Jani. She really gets confused at times, but we still love her.
That is what I like the most about living here on Rainbow Gate Farm. We accept everyone for who they are, regardless of what deformities they might have, or how odd they might look or talk. Everyone, that is, except for that no-good, low down, goat-chasing wolf.
