Word of the Day: Peccadillo ( ) “A small relatively unimportant offense or sin. Synonyms: misdemeanor, petty offense, indiscretion, lapse, misdeed.”
Have you ever had a pet goat? We had Mabel the goat. Like many of the animals that crossed my path in childhood, I really don’t know exactly when or where my parents acquired Mabel. My Dad seemed to have a knack for finding animals to add to our menagerie. Anyway, Mabel came to us as a kid and grew rapidly into a full-sized, adult goat. She was quite the little buddy with the horses and hung out with them in the pasture. Goats bond pretty quickly with their human companions as well as with other animals and are quite affectionate and often equally mischievous. Mabel knew her name, and when you went to the corral and called “Mabel, Mabel,” she eagerly responded with a resounding “Baaaa, Baaaaaa!” Mabel loved treats, and being a highly successful escape artist, she often found delightful and tasty morsels in the neighbors’ yards.
Her eating the spring daffodils and the iris was a nuisance, but sometimes her escapades exceeded that. We had one neighbor down the street who had a greenhouse where he raised prize orchids. I bet you can see this one coming. On one of her many sojourns around the neighborhood, she found the greenhouse, filled with a delightful salad bar. Being a hungry and not very discriminating goat, she nibbled every plant down to the nub and then wisely headed for home with the neighbor in hot pursuit brandishing a shovel and uttering a variety of deprecations that my young ears should probably not have heard! My father managed to save Mabel from any bodily injury, but relationships with that neighbor were pretty strained from then on. Apparently there was an up-coming flower show, and his entire stock of entries was now residing in Mabel’s very hardy digestive tract. It is only now as I have, often unsuccessfully, tried to coax my grocery store orchids to rebloom that I can truly appreciate the depths of his wrath.
As she matured, Mabel grew a very nice set of horns which she took great delight in using on every possible target she could find. Once again, the smallest target, my little sister, was the most desirable one to become the butt of her attention, so to speak. Walking across the corral in an inattentive fashion was a sure invitation to find yourself lying flat in the mud. Despite our affection for her, she was given to our landlady Bess’ brother, who owned a large ranch close to Grapevine. That land is now probably included in the site of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport. I do hope he sold it for a nice profit. I don’t recall the rancher’s name; it might have been Robert.
Robert kept about twenty or thirty horses and ran cattle on his land. On many a wonderful Saturday morning Bess would take me along with her to the ranch to ride horses with her and to check the fences. It was on one of those rides that I first rode a pacer. Now you may be wondering what a pacer is? Most four-legged animals trot or run with opposite legs moving forward together–right front leg and left rear leg, left front leg and right rear leg, and so on. We do essentially the same thing when we walk. Our left leg and right arm move together and then our right leg and left arm. A pacer moves both legs on the same side together at the same time, resulting in a very smooth, sort of shimmying type of gait. If you’ve ever seen harness races, the announcers will talk about the trotters and the pacers. I don’t know what the incidence of pacers is among horses, but it is apparently an inbred genetic trait. Incidentally, trotters and pacers do not race against one another in harness racing. They have separate races for each.
So sweet little Mabel went to the ranch where she became the darling of the family and learned to be a Judas goat. The Judas goat leads unsuspecting cattle or sheep into the pens or chutes, often sadly heading to the stockyards, and then jumps aside at the last minute. As a sign of her importance, Mabel wore a large bell around her neck to help encourage the cattle to follow her. On one occasion she was leading the cattle up pto the chutes to run them through the cattle dip, a nasty smelling black liquid which I assume killed off various bugs or parasites. Robert was standing looking down at the cattle running through the dip when apparently Mabel grew concerned that. he might also be infested with some kind of bugs. She did the only thing a responsible, caring goat could do; she gave him a firm butt in the rear end, sending him flying into the cattle dip!
Luckily for Mabel, Robert had a good sense of humor, or she too might have ended up on the dinner table like poor old Horace the rooster. She lived out her years on the ranch, and hopefully didn’t get into too much more trouble. At least we never heard about any additional peccadillos!
2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers
Next week it is time to “Meet the Dogs.” Hope you can join me!
