The subject of grass seems to be a never-ending topic in my life. Its eradication was a chore bestowed upon me one day when I discovered my daughter and both of my sons had grown and left home to find their own way in the real world. Needless to say, if the rabbits aren’t munching it, and my dogs aren’t in the process of plowing caverns through it, I’m either plucking or mowing it. Considering our lawn mower has been long out of commission, I have of late been weed-eating the knee high abundance of the quickly spreading stuff before it takes over what is supposed to be my yard.
This morning while swinging my howling weed-eater from side-to-side chopping the fingers of green that comprise my lawn, I concluded there had to be an easier way, and that brought to mind a time in the past when my ingenious spouse came to a similar conclusion while he stood regarding the abundance of poison oak that dotted our three and a half acres when we first moved to this area.
My husband’s solution came about one rainy Saturday when he decided that goats were the ultimate answer. Someone had assured him that goats simply adore eating poison oak. Needless to say, I assure you, that certain someone definitely wasn’t me. But despite all my objections, he purchased three goats for the endeavor of eradicating the profusion of poison oak. He brought home Mocha, Cocoa, and Sugar; Sugar being the most adorably soft, Angora kid.
The day we brought his four legged solutions home, the weather was horrendous. It was raining barrels and had been for weeks. At that point our Redding earth was about the color and consistency of chocolate pudding. To venture beyond the front door required hip boots or high water waders. If one were to stand in one location and shift their weight from one foot to the other more than once they took the chance of breaking through the top crust and sinking up to their hips in the oozy, gooey clay that lay unsuspectingly like quicksand just barely beneath the soggy surface.
My husband was determined to build a shelter for housing his four legged solutions. He promptly donned rain gear and built an impromptu small structure to act as a shelter. That night with the goats huddled inside their newly constructed abode, it began to snow. When I saw the snow, my thoughts went to the two kids that were only a few weeks of age. I fretted about whether they were warm enough. After an hour of pacing and audibly worrying, I threw on my coat and hat and trudged through the falling flakes to check on our newly acquired brood.
Inside the shelter Bob had strewn loose straw on which the animals were expected to sleep. When I entered I found Sugar curled in one corner shivering and sleeping alone, looking like a banished child. She appeared tiny and pathetically vulnerable. Being of soft heart, although my husband aptly defined it more in the nature of being a sucker, I carried the soft, white, shivering kid into the house and made a bed for her in a cardboard box. I worried that the small doleful creature might inevitably succumb to pneumonia from her experience in the cold.
My worries were soon proved unfounded and definitely short lived. By midnight the fluffy, snowy white lump of Angora had fully revived and was now bounding noisily up and down the hallway of our small mobile home, nibbling on my hand as I tried to sleep, bleating and desperately attempting to convince someone to play with her. I quickly learned just how frisky a goat kid can become in the middle of the night. She leaped up onto the bed with a compelling “bahhhhhh” and four sharp little hooves.
Thereafter Sugar’s bed was placed inside the shower enclosure at bedtime. The confinement worked. She promptly lay down and went to sleep each night as the shower door closed. Thank heavens the snow seldom lasts for more than a day or two in Redding. I came to the conclusion that I’m not that fond of sharing my home with the livestock, although more came and went over the years.
When the weather cleared, my husband commenced to fence an area to confine the goats. I chuckled when I saw him stringing barbed wire fencing. Anyone remotely familiar with goats would have laughed as well. You see, goats are more ingenious than some would believe when it comes to finding ways to defeat even the smallest of mesh fencing, much less barbed wire.
Within a week, the goats had consumed my garden, my young fruit trees, nut trees, the laundry, the doormat, garden hoses, and the broom. But the poison oak, needless to say, was flourishing. They avoided the poison oak as though it was the plague.
Bob, being determined to confine the goats, promptly strung barbed wire so close that even a gnat would have had trouble squeezing through. But naturally, it was to no avail. The goats jumped over, climbed through, and crawled under the fence on their knees if need be. Their most ingenious technique for escaping their confinement was to climb up a massive, ancient, oak tree that bent and arched over the fence, spanning it like a bridge to the other side, where upon the gleeful goats instantly jumped to the ground, bleating in smug triumph.
Needless to say the poison oak was still flourishing two months later when Bob decided it was time to sell his unorthodox solutions. To this day he still chuckles to himself when he hears someone comment on either poison oak or goats; he swallowed that line once, but never again. I still chuckle every time I remember the little white Angora clicking her hooves on the linoleum as she leaped and ran up and down the hallway, and the clever ways the furry creatures found to breach the fence; that inept barrier that formed their corral.
