Fuddland

As some of you may know, my Dad lives in the middle of nowhere, in Ireland. A few weeks ago, he went away for a few days and asked a friend to keep an eye on the place. The friend duly went over to look for anything out of the ordinary — and was rather surprised to discover a goat had wandered into the garden and apparently taken up residence.

It had already devoured many of the plants in the flowerbeds, taking a particular and unfortunate liking to the sunflowers that had been growing all summer and were [until then] about ten feet tall. No amount of shooing or — bravely — tugging at the goats horns would shift it very far, and there were no visible tags to identify its owner. The friend had no option but to contact my Dad, who — through a series of rapidly-made phonecalls — got a local farmer to come over and tether the goat to a fence-post down the end of the garden, well away from doing any more damage to the flowerbeds, but with plenty of grass and weeds on which to munch, and trees under which to shelter. It seemed as if the goat had been tamed at some point, because as soon as it had a rope around its neck, it became very cooperative.

My Dad returned a couple of days later, and after checking with the owner of the neighbouring fields, managed to lead the goat quite a way away from the house, to share a field with some cattle. And that was the last my Dad would see of his visitor.

Or so he thought.

The other day my Dad discovered that the goat had returned, this time deciding the disused hay-shed — overrun with weeds but still providing good shelter — was a fine place to hang out. Apparently this goat knew his stereotypical role in life and was being decidedly stubborn. Dad has now decided that so long as he can keep the goat away from the flowerbeds, and until he has more luck discovering where it originally came from, there’s no harm in letting it live in his garden. Besides, would you argue with a goat that looks this mean?

#1

Dina | 2004 / 09 / 15 – 23:10

Cuteness! (But I mightn’t think so if he was eating up my flower beds, assuming I had flower beds in the first place.)

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