The idea of putting my goats on leashes and walking them did not just come to me one day. I actually have experience
walking farm animals. I grew up in the country We grew the vegetables we ate and raised a lot of the meat we ate. My mother milked a cow twice a day for many years. We didn't grow up drinking cokes and such. We always drank milk with every meal and water when we were thirsty.
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| Back row: Lenora, Debbie and Me |
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For some reason my parents came up with the idea that our Jersey cow, Baby, needed to be
walked in the yard, where we had great St. Augustine grass. I really suspect that it was not so much of a
need for the cow as it was a way for our parents
to keep 3 adolescent daughters busy. So along with my sisters, Debbie and Lenora, we had the chore of leading Baby on a rope in the yard. You can imagine this was not something we wanted to do. As a way to keep our turns equal, Mother came up with the idea of playing one of her country music albums on the stereo. We each had to walk the cow until one side of the album finished. When Mother flipped the record over, your turn was up and the other sister had to take the rope. The windows were open, because we had no air conditioning, so while we walked the cow, we could hear each song and know when the last song played that the turn was up.
Oh Lord, I remember those Buck Owens and George Jones songs.
I never did like country music after I got away from home.
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| Baby with that Crazy Expression |
One day during my turn to walk Baby, she suddenly stopped grazing and snapped her head up. I was staring into the face of a cow that had a crazy expression. Before I knew it, she took off running around the house to the backyard. Of course I had no prayer of keeping a grip on the rope. At 80 pounds, I had no control over a crazed 900 pound cow. But I ran right behind her screaming for help, because I didn't want to know the consequences of loosing our milk cow. She ran straight to the pump house. With her mouth she turned the faucet on and proceeded to drink the water flowing from the spout. It was an amazing thing to observe. No one had ever seen her do that before. Who would have thought she knew about it? Well, she didn't turn the faucet off when she had had enough. But I did grab the rope and she returned to grazing on the St. Augustine grass until Buck Owens finished singing
I've got a Tiger by the Tail.
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| A typical Jersey cow. Ours had horns that the rope was wrapped around. |
So perhaps, I too, have just come up with a way of keeping my grandchildren busy and out of trouble. They say at some point in our lives we turn into our parents.
Beware Debbie and Lenora. You're next.