Lonely Goats Tour 2008

It is a funny thing to find your children so very much unlike the other 30 running around screaming and chasing goats. Both of mine, separately, took up an adoption and compassion cause. After visitng with and brushing every goat she could find sitting alone near the fence, Sedona took to one particular goat, and there she sat for more than 30 minutes. Talk about dedication.

Jordan in the meantime traveled around looking for the loneliest, smallest goats and offered them additional milk (yes, we are crazy city folk feeding fenced goats from bottles for sport).

While the other children scrambled amidst the frenzied goats all fighting each other for the bottles of milk, mine were repeatedly found as far from the action as you could get. While somehow sweetly satisfying and encouraging it was also, I'm afraid, exhausting. I simply wasn't as taken with the goats as they were and, not wanting to leave their bleeding hearts alone, had to kind of loiter around the goat pen for a great deal longer than I'd ever intended or desired.

So I'm having all these swell thoughts about the kids kind hearts, and great compassion, their slow and steady approach to serving these underling goats, right? Ah yes, we've recently applied for 501c3 status, don't worry. . . .
And then Jordan, sweet Jordan, helped me snap out of it.

He'd been fending off other goats and humans in service of a particular goat (you'll see him below in the slides) for quite some time. Any other kids who tried to feed him were quickly turned away. Afterall, "this is MY goat." He looked at me and introduced me to his goat, was silent for a minute then peered deep into the goat's eyes and announced, "This goat doesn't like me anymore I need to find a new goat."

I still laugh good and hard when I replay it in my head (or on my screen as the case may be). I might be alone in seeing the irony here. Just as I'm thinking how devoted to this goat he is, how seemingly unselfish, he reveals that it had little to do with that particular goat. Rather, he wanted to be needed, to be adored. Ahh yes, human afterall.

Other highlights from our trip to Grant's Farm:

-A kangaroo that didn't do so much as flutter an eyelash (do they have eyelashes?) in the hour we were near its pen. Very creepy.

- Jordan got to feed an apple to an elephant!! I thought his face would cracked he was smiling so hard for what seemed like hours afterward.

- Displeased that the brochure showed a young horse alongside one of the full grown Clydesdale Budweiser horses when there wasn't a baby to found anywhere in the stables. . .Sedona announced that the babies were all hiding under the hay. I can't tell you how put out she was though. She's not down with false advertising.

- Ducks mating just a few feet away from the crowd. Always a good conversation piece for both 4 year olds and 9 year olds alike.

- Camels. Really, there isn't much about camels that isn't bizarre and interesting and somehow a little bit gross. They seem just great in movies and on safari home decor but up close and personal . . . yeah, I dunno.