Rachel Wise: Some goats should remain nameless

Rachel Wise

It's taken a while for the newest goat on the property to get a name.

He's not overly friendly, and "Come Back Here Dammit" was already taken.

So he languished, nameless for a while, until the first time I saw him on the wrong side of the fence, trotting inquisitively down the neighbour's driveway.

I was driving out the gate to go to work and I contemplated hurdling the fence and chasing him down, but I was in a dress and wearing high heels so the chance of success was slim.

So instead I hit the accelerator, voomed down my driveway and up the neighbour's driveway, leaning on the horn all the way.

That fixed it, not only did he race home in sheer terror, but as he did so he gained the name of "Get out of There, You Little Sod".

I stopped the car long enough to shore up some electric fencing and went on my way to work.

The next morning Get Out of There was out on the roadside, eating weeds in the ditch.

That time I had to chase him on foot, and he was promptly banished from the electric fenced paddock - as he was obviously immune to electricity - and put in the home paddock behind proper fence wire and battens.

The rest of the week I found him in the other neighbour's paddock, on top of the chook house, and every time the gate was open for a moment he was in the house section heading for the grapevine.

The final straw was when the daughters and grandkids were visiting and amongst the to-ings and fro-ings from the paddock to the house with bikes and dogs and balls and mud, fetching the eggs and feeding the pigs, someone left the gate open.

"Oy!" I yelled out the kitchen window.

"Someone has left the gate open. Get Out of There is in Grandad's trees. Get him out of there!"

The daughters chased him out of there, while the grandsons loudly denied leaving the gate open.

About 10 minutes later Get Out of There was in the grapevine.

"I told you to keep the gate shut," I growled. Everyone loudly protested their innocence. I chased the goat back into the paddock and was delivering one of my better lectures on gates and their use to keep creatures out ... when my audience started laughing.

Get Out of There was standing behind me.

"He jumped straight over the fence" my audience claimed, delightedly.

Before I could express my forgiveness for accusing them of negligent gate use (I was going to, really I was) Get Out of There had dodged towards Grandad's trees and we all rushed to shoo him off.

Thwarted, he swerved in the direction of the grapevine but was cut off by a flailing 4-year-old.

Into the horse shed he went, munching into a bag of feed, and then out and round the corner towards the vege garden.

I followed, hurling a leaf rake to head him off. He rounded the orange tree and made another run for the native trees.

Round and round we went but no way was Get Out of There getting out. He was determined to stay in the house yard with all the forbidden edibles.

Eventually we all stood, puffing, and watched him defoliating the grapevine.

"Get the nanny goat," I told my youngest daughter. "He will follow her and we can get them into the hayshed and catch him."

She fetched the obliging nanny goat and led it through the gate. Get Out of There looked up ... just as my daughter was shoved rudely aside by Mindy the sheep. And Stuffy the ewe, and the twin lambs, Spotto and Botto.

"Aaagh!" I yelled. Mindy raced for the trees, Spotto and Botto hard on her heels. Stuffy went for the bag of feed and the nanny goat joined the smaller goat at the grapevine.

I grabbed the nanny, dragging her by the collar into the hayshed where I tied her to the tack-shed door handle with a piece of baling twine.

Then I armed the daughters with two big pieces of plywood from the shed and positioned them beside the gate. "Stand here and be a fence," I told them.

Retrieving my leaf rake I advanced on Mindy and the twins. They turned tail at the sight of their angry, rake-wielding owner and ran.

My plywood-and-daughter fence withstood the onslaught, deflecting the herd into the paddock. Stuffy decided there was safety in numbers and shot after them.

Calling on the makeshift fence to advance on the smaller goat, we pushed him towards the hayshed and seeing his friend he ran in.

And straight up the hay bales to the top.

So did I.

And I grabbed him by a back leg and hung on.

He's back in the paddock now. There's a long rope tied to his collar.
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This weekend I am going to tie him to the front fence with a sign round his neck. For sale: hairy jumper.