When good goats go bad

 Sometimes life really does imitate art. 

Well mine does anyway. 

And last Friday was a prime example of it.

My friend Rebecca (I’ll leave out her last name in feeble attempt to protect the innocent) and I met up for a long overdue lunch date. It was an enjoyable visit, for us anyway. At the very least it was entertaining for the other diners to watch as we attempted to wrangle two toddlers, prevent near spills and stave off the ever looming pre-nap meltdown of otherwise delightful little girls. But the story about life and art really has less to do with lunch and more to do with what happened after.

You see Rebecca and I go way back-  decades to be more precise. After leaving LaFollette for a few years and finding ourselves back here now married with families, hers larger than mine, we have jokingly referred to ourselves as Emmy Lou Harris’ “Red Dirt Girl(s)”.  The song tells the story of two friends, kindred spirits really, and their lives in a small Alabama town. The tale is pretty tragic, but over the years it’s kind of been the song we refer to when something especially redneck happens to us.

So back to last Friday. Not too long after I got home from lunch I was putting my younger daughter down for a nap when Rebecca called sounding like she’s somewhere between laughing hysterically and a full blown panic. 

“It seems my goats have turned to religion,” she said. Over my roars of laughter she explained that on her way home she noticed five goats hanging out in the Valley Fellowship Church of God parking lot. After a second of thinking “Wow somebody’s goats are out” she realized it was her very own bunch that had made the mile and a half or so trek down to the meeting house. 

Obviously they didn’t realize they were a couple of days early for services. They are only goats after all.

My husband is the one who got the goats, at her request and despite my warnings, so I felt somewhat obliged to help her. I quickly hung up and called Wesley for some advice, to which he promptly responded he was nowhere close by and we would just have to work it out. 

Fortunately I tracked down my father-in-law and he agreed to bring a trailer down to pick up the unruly beasts.

When I got to the church Rebecca had run home to get some feed and there was her poor husband Tommy and one of the employees from his business valiantly attempting to corral the bunch.

As it usually goes with animals not all of them felt like cooperating. Four of the goats marched into the trailer with little coaxing.  But there’s always got to be one that refuses to follow the crowd.

I really wonder what passersby thought when they saw five adults on their hands and knees surrounding a stock trailer in a church parking lot. 

I’m surprised we didn’t make the news for holding some sort of strange ritual. What the people on the road couldn’t see was that we were trying to catch the crazy goat that decided to seek refuge under the chariot awaiting to transport it home.  Of course we were no match for the wily beast that managed to squeeze between the tires and jump like a gazelle into the woods.

It was at that point my friend and I determined it was time for us time for us to get in our respective vehicles with our screaming little girls and leave the men to it. 

Turns out we really don’t make very good red dirt girls although I’m sure the song will continue to be our theme until we lay our hammers down in the red dirt ground.