Wednesday Words of Wisdom

Did you ever wonder why 'easy open' features never work?  I have. And they are not a convenience designed only for human consumption. Have you ever tried to pull that little string at the top of a feed sack?  What about that little pull feature on the package of Peanuts?  You know, the one that either won't 'pull' or pulls half way and stops?  Yeah, that's the one.

So here is a little food for thought: "The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly, plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation." - Raoul Vaneigem. Which is just a long winded way of saying what the old proverb says - 'Every convenience brings its own inconveniences along with it.'

Besides, in my estimation, if they worked, well, that would just be way too easy,wouldn't it?

Got Summer?

It's summer.

Really?  Where?

Well, here, of course.  It happened last Tuesday around 10:16.

No kidding.  Could have fooled me.  Doesn't the sun shine when it's summer?

Well, yes ... usually.

Huh.  Doesn't it get past 70 degrees if it's summer?

Well, yes ... usually.

Huh.    MR. Forgetty-pants strikes again.

'Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,
Those days of soda and PEANUTS and beer.
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,
You'll wish that summer could always be here!' - Words by Charles Tobias, sung by Nat King Cole and Poetic License taken by Marigold. 

Wednesday Words of Wisdom (A Day Early)

You may have noticed that things look different.  Well, Wednesday's words of wisdom are this:  If it ain't broke, don't fix it!  Now I was perfectly happy with my old blog look.  But NO, I had to go and play with the new template design.  Allow me to say that  it isn't entirely true when they say you can't go back, because, in fact, you can.  It's just that if you do, things disappear.  Suddenly I was missing buttons, and the worst part is that there are many bloggers out there with the exact same problem.  'Help' didn't have any.   Help that is. Nope. 

So here is the new me.  I HATE change.  In this day and age, changes are all over the place and cleverly disguised as 'progress'.  Oy.  What if someone decides to change my Peanuts???  I can not bear (or is it goat?) to think about it.

Take my advice.  If you like what you have, don't automatically decide the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.  Because, my friends, as Erma Bombeck so aptly put it, 'the grass is always greener over the septic tank.'  Now what does that tell you?  Hmmmmm?

The Scaredeer

You may recall that awhile back the deer made a stealth run through the goatmother's gardens. They feasted on strawberries, raspberries and various and sundry ornamental plants. Much like a tornado, they left a wide swath of destruction in their wake.

After that, the goatmother purchased a highly recommended product called 'Bobbex'. 'Bobbex' is made up of things like rotten eggs, catfood, garlic, pepper, and other such gustatory delights. Trust me. It stinks. I know this because the vegetable garden and the raspberries are by the barn. The 'Bobbex' worked pretty well, but the problem arose when it mostly washed off. Now how, I wonder, could that happen here? We never have rain. Anyway, that sort of torturous event makes it rather difficult to maintain a proper 'Bobbex' barrier. Acts of God and all that. Hence, the deer reconnoitered, sniffed the air, and sprang forward yelling things like 'Oo-Rah!" and 'Remember the Alamo!'.

I have to say, the damage wasn't quite as extensive as the pre-'Bobbex' period. However, the goatmother, naturally distressed by the occurrence, came up with an idea. The goatmother is chock full of ideas. Just ask the goatfather. Anyway, the goatmother got to thinking how certain smells deter deer and keep them from noshing. For example, they sell concentrated predatory animal urine for that purpose. ( Ewwwww.) Or like, of course, the 'Bobbex'. Or some folks say you can hang bars of deodorant soap. (That never works. I think deer are morally opposed to Zestful cleanliness.)

Anyway, the goatmother came up with the idea of the scaredeer. She thought imbuing articles of clothing with human scent, and stuffing them to look like an actual human, made a lot of sense. Of course the scent could not be the goatmother's because, let's face it, nothing is afraid of the goatmother. Birds land in her lap, for goats' sake! So the goatmother got the goatfather to donate a pair of ratty old jeans and a dilapidated old shirt, and forced him to wear them for days on end so they would smell like him. By the time he was finished, they could almost stand by themselves. Almost.

So what to stuff the scaredeer with? It couldn't be newspaper because that would soon become a soggy mess and the scaredeer would end up shriveled and moldy. So, the goatmother decided to stuff it with Peanuts. I became quite excited when I heard the news. I thought, 'Oy, Boy!!!! A scaredeer stuffed with mounds and mounds of these:



Unfortunately, it turned out to be mounds and mounds of these:



I was SO disappointed, I can tell you. Finally, however, the masterpiece was complete. Permettez-moi de vous presenter, Monsieur Scaredeer:



What a hunk. From his athletic legs up to his dapper blue chapeau, he is the epitome of scaredyness. And fashionable? Why just look at that trim waist with that whole Ellie-Mae-Clampett-rope-tie belt thing going on.


Oops. Barn door's open.


And just look at that I'll-huff-and-I'll-puff mighty He-man profile. Any deer in its right mind will take one look and head off to summer in Canada - or at least to the neighbor's. There's just one problem. It smells like the goatfather, and it looks like the goatfather, so how come it won't throw the Frisbee like the goatfather?


No matter how many times the goatmother picked up the Frisbee and threw it, the Mighty Quinn brought it back and left it at the feet of the scaredeer. Dogs. Oy.

Anyway, time will tell whether or not the scaredeer will be effective. We can only hope that the deer will spot it and be spurred into movement - preferably in the opposite direction. I hope I'm there to see it. After all, nothing runs like a deer.

Wednesday Words of Wisdom

I have noticed that a lot of people have 'Wordless Wednesdays'. Anybody that knows me, knows I have far too much to say for that sort of nonsense. So, I have decided that every Wednesday I will offer you the benefit of some small bit of advice, or perhaps an observation. Who knows where the road may take us, but I can assure you it will be an entertaining ride.

So, here goes. Never, never, never spray your hinges and locks around the barn with WD-40. Goats love this stuff. We lick it off faster than you can spray it. We'd drink it if we could get the goatmother to put that little red tube in our mouths. I think it comes from a goat's inherent need to run a well-oiled machine. But whatever the reason, It just tastes so GOOD. So, if you don't want to have to come out to the barn every so often to check and see if anyone has died in the last few minutes, take my advice and just don't use the stuff. It's waaaay too much of a temptation.

Feeling Sluggish?

No, this is not a suggestion to try Activia, or even to maximize your fiber intake. You may remember my recent complai ... err ... laments about the amount of rain we've gotten this year. And, when it isn't raining, well, it's been pretty much overcast. Nobody here is all that happy about it. Though, I suppose I shouldn't say 'nobody'. There are, in fact, some who are absolutely ecstatic about the situation. We have black ones ...

... and brown ones ...

We have white ones ...

... and even the fashion conscious ...

We have long ones ...

... and shorter ones ...

... and they even come in Super Size. You want flies with that??? (That, by the way, is a ball-point pen next to him.)

And they will consume anything in their path ...

Look! An action shot ...

These guys have consumed many of the goatmother's plants despite her best efforts. She even tried talking to them and they actually seemed to sit up and pay attention ...

But I guess you could say her words fell on deaf antennae because this is what she got ...


So the goatmother took to making morning and evening slug patrol runs. When she came upon an unsuspecting slug, she would snatch him up and fling him as far as she could. Usually it was into the brush in the faint hope it would get disoriented and become lost in the woods. She figured, at the very least, it would take a loooooooong time to make it back to civilization. And if you think the Mighty Quinn worked that hard back then, well, you ought to see him now. 'Cuz let's face it, it is rather hard to tell the difference.

At any rate, after standing on my stump for some time and considering this matter, it is my belief the goatmother is going about it all wrong. If she didn't plant anything, there wouldn't be anything for the stupid slugs to eat. The answer seems simple to me, but, no, the deluded goatmother keeps right on feeding the slugs. "Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian." - Heywood C. Broun. I wonder if Heywood knew the goatmother?

A Collapsed Case

Allow me to tell you a tale. Or is it a tail? I can never be sure. Anyway, one bright and sunny day, Sedgewick Snake (for you see he was of English descent and his mother named him aptly so) was slithering lazily along. He was quite enjoying the sun for in these parts, sunshine can be a treasured commodity. Sedgewick spied movement in the grass and was elated to think he had come upon a particularly delectable morsel. But Sedgewick was, instead, suddenly snatched up. The world became dark and the quarters quite close. So close, in fact, that Sedgewick found it difficult to breathe. Then the world faded into comforting blackness. Sedgewick came to and saw a tunnel. Mind you the tunnel was rather thin, but that didn't seem to present any kind of an obstacle to a snake. At the end of the tunnel was a beautiful light. Sedgewick went forward - into the light.

Enter the goatmother. She looks about, cleaning up the barn, and spies something odd lying in the hay. 'What is this?', queries the goatmother. Upon closer inspection it appears to be a snake, but not just any snake. Oh, no. This snake is of the flat variety. Very flat. Flatter than a pancake, as a matter of fact. This snake was so flat you could have ... Oh, never mind. Take my word for it. That snake was FLAT. Oddly enough, however, he was sort of laid out in a nice 'S' shape. Almost like he'd been slithering along and Pompeii happened. It was very odd indeed.

So the goatmother thought, 'Huh...' and put the snake in her cleaning up bucket thinking tomorrow morning she would take a picture of the flat snake. That was what she thought, but everyone knows that intentions are only as good as chance allows them to be, right? So in the morning, the goatmother came out with the camera. She grabbed up the bucket of , ahem, goat gifts and hay, expecting to fish out the flat snake and help him make his mark on notoriety. But you know what? The flat snake was gone. Pffhttt! The goatmother actually pawed through that bucket of goat fertilizer-supreme and came up literally empty handed. She even took the bucket out, dumped it on the ground, and sifted through the contents. Ewwwwwww.

Enter moi, Marigold Holmes and my ever faithful sidekick (maybe that should be headbutt) Watson. A mystery afoot to be sure! Who? I ask you WHO would be so bold (not to mention so stupid) as to steal a flat snake from a bucket of goat gold in the dead of night? It is simply unconscionable. (Is that really a word?) Nevertheless, we shall investigate. I can not think that those stupid mice in the barn took it. It was large enough it would have taken at least three to carry it. And why would they want it in the first place? No, it is a mystery to be sure.


At any rate, you were going to be presented with a lovely picture of the flat snake. Now, I'm afraid all you will get is what you see above: a somewhat boring picture of the goatmother's red cleaning bucket. We may never know why some demented soul would choose to pinch a flat snake in the dead of night. We can only surmise that they needed it - for God knows what, but they needed it nonetheless. Perhaps they were really hungry. If that is the case, maybe our flat snake is somewhere being noshed in the manner of a jerky snack. Kind of like when you are driving and come upon those roadside stands announcing, 'Elk Jerky! Buffalo Jerky! 50 Feet Ahead!!!' 'Flat Snake Jerky, Here!!! Last Chance!!!!' I wonder if it tastes like chicken?

So Here's The Thing ...

You may recall my recent letter to God. Well, you see, He must've had his hearing aid in because he heard me. Really, He did. The very next day we had sunshine. I actually got out of the barn and didn't have to stand by Ella. And I ate grass! Green, luscious grass instead of old dry, dead hay. I breathed the fresh air, romped on my tire, and did I mention I got to eat grass???

That lasted four whole, luxurious days. The problem is that after four days, well, God forgot. Again. I know, I know. We have to be tolerant of the aged, but Great Goats! This is getting rather ridiculous. The normal rainfall for us, for the month of May, is around 1.64 inches. This May we had 3.34. Over half of the month was spent in sousedom. And now it's June - practically summer. Not here. Rain yesterday, today, and a high of 57 degrees. Somebody is being Mr. forgetty-pants.

So, I've been thinking. For someone who actually created Gingko biloba, wouldn't you think He'd be able to remember where he planted it??? Or perhaps it is time to mention Aricept. At any rate, I plan to remain optimistic. Sodden, but optimistic nonetheless. "I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will." - Clint Eastwood. Now ain't that the truth?