January and February are difficult months on the plains of the Upper Midwest. The sky provides a gorgeous light show in mauve, peach, lavender and gold twice a day, but the rest of the time the moonscape of gray, brown and white can get monotonous.
There’s also the cold and the relentless wind and the tyranny of winter chore clothes that must be laboriously donned every time one wishes to go outside. As the days tick slowly by, it gets harder and harder to believe spring will ever come.
Cute and cuddly
In an effort to combat the winter doldrums, I am overtaken most Februaries by an overwhelming desire to acquire new animals — specifically new baby animals. What better than something cute and cuddly to carry us through to warmer weather?
Baby animals are not ubiquitous in deep winter, but they are not completely impossible to find either. A few producers in our area still lamb in January, so for several years in a row, overcome by baby animal fever, I ended up with bottle lambs rejected from the flock. The extra work and the extra snuggles were a perfect antidote to the malaise.
Two years ago, the fever happened to coincide with an extended arctic blast that resulted in two newborn Nigerian dwarf goats needing a home; I was only too happy to step in and take them.
My kids, then 3 and 4 1/2, promptly named the goats Honeybee and Bucky the Woodpecker. An explanation for those names would require a whole other column, but suffice it to say, if you’ve not spent a week of double-digit subzero temperatures indoors with two small children and two baby goats (the latter clad in diapers and onesies to keep said diapers from falling off) have you really lived? It was adorableness overload and total chaos — just what we needed to make it to spring.
This year I hoped our Christmas puppy would keep the pangs to a minimum, and so far he has. However, the memory of those baby goats’ goofy antics, plus the rising price of milk, started me dreaming and scheming recently.
New ‘boo’
Honeybee is now old enough to be a mother herself, and the combination of spring babies and fresh goat milk was too powerful to resist, so last weekend we brought home a visitor named Boo. Like Bucky and Honeybee, Boo is a Nigerian dwarf goat.
He is short, personable, with longish white-and-black hair, thick, curving horns, and, like all billy goats, is accompanied by an aroma so powerful it would be best categorized as “reeking to high heaven.”
Since his arrival, no matter where one goes on the ranch, Boo’s scent is sure to follow, and the closer one gets to him, the more powerfully one is reminded of his virile presence.
Perhaps it’s a good thing
Honeybee hasn’t gone into heat since Boo arrived, and feeling lonely and a little bored, he broke out of their pen late yesterday afternoon.
I happened to be out walking through the adjacent pasture at dusk, and I smelled him before I saw him.
His escape efforts earned him a ride home in the back of the pickup and a night in the barn while we reinforced the fence of the pen, but despite having washed my hands and changed my clothes since then, I swear I can still smell his singular odor clinging to me after lifting him into the bed of the aforementioned pickup.
So there you have it: Instead of spending February making bottles and washing the diapers of two cute baby goats, I will be chasing a super stinky baby daddy around.
If excitement is what the second half of winter on a ranch usually lacks, I guess we’ve got it now.
And for my husband, who like most other civilized people, disapproves of barnyard animals in the house, it’s a welcome alternative.
So, happy early Valentine’s Day, my love, and to all unexpected visitors, sorry about the smell!
