The does are named Gypsy and Dora, and this turned out to be unfortunately prophetic naming. Wednesday evening, all three goats, including Mufasa the buck, disappeared. They managed to escape their new fencing and took off. Early Thursday morning my dad, who lives near her farm, called and said he saw two of them right below his house, but couldn't get close enough to catch them. Well, that was a starting point for the search that morning. M and her two oldest children searched for hours on foot, in the rain, but couldn't find them. I searched the woods and down near a pond behind my dad's house, and left messages with several people on the road. We all looked again Thursday evening, with no success. I did manage to find a goat, but it belonged to someone else. I was so excited when I saw a white horned head through the bushes, but when I got out there, it was tied up in someone's yard. So much for that!
Friday morning I had a facebook message from a friend. His friend had posted that they had two goats come right up to their house late the night before. Yay! Finally, another sighting! I called Mandy and gave her the address so we could start the search there that day. She was heading there from about 30 minutes away, and then had a flat tire. If not for bad luck...
I went to the house that had spotted the does, and found out they had been seen there Wednesday night, not Thursday night. Back to square one. My dad's sighting was still the most recent one. Where to start looking? Surely they hadn't gone far! I went up and down the road, leaving my phone number and questioning everyone I could find.
I stopped at my daughter's house, which is near M's farm and my dad's house, to strategize a new search plan. I kept thinking, they have got to be right around here somewhere. They can't be far. I had just pulled up Google Earth to get a better idea of the neighborhood (I wasn't leaving this to chance!) Then I got a phone call from Dad's neighbor...
"The goats are headed your way! They just came by my house". I flung the laptop down (sorry, Kacey!) and ran outside to see the two little does nonchalantly strolling up the middle of the road, right towards the house. YES!!!
I grabbed the leashes and food bucket and headed towards them. I managed to snag one of them and get her into the trailer, but could not catch the other one. Dad and the neighbor were helping, so we had the neighbor to keep the one inside the trailer. Dad and I herded the other one back towards the trailer, where she jumped right in to be with her buddy.
I was so happy to be able to return two of them to M and her family, but I knew her son was so disappointed that his buck hadn't been spotted at all. Without telling him, I suspected he had either gotten caught by a coyote or someone looking for a weekend goat roast.
Late Friday evening I was headed home from a friend's house when I got another phone call. The little buck had been spotted! My daughter and I immediately turned around and headed up to the road where he had been seen. We rode to one end, no goat, and turned around. About halfway back up the road, my daughter yelled out "there he is!" Without any feed, or leashes, armed with only a half eaten bag of Bugles, we jump out to try and catch him. He wasn't a fan of Bugles. As it's getting dark, we're tracking and trying to corner him through several yards in the neighborhood. I knew most of the people on the road, but there was one house that had residents that are, umm, less than neighborly. They hate other people's animals, especially goats, due to a previous encounter with another neighbor. So where does Mufasa go? Yep, right to their house. We knocked on the door to ask permission to go traipsing around their yard at night, but no one comes to the door. Great. We manage to get him back into a friend's front yard (incidentally, the yard where I got married 25 years ago), but then he gets back into the previous yard and up under their back deck.
Now, I love my friend M, and I love goats, but I had to carefully weigh the consequences of getting A. shot, B. arrested, or C. both, by heading under someone's deck without permission or knowledge.
We go to a neighbor's house for a flashlight and goat feed and come back, to try and lure him back out. I decide to try one more time to get someone to the door. As I head up the stairs of the front porch, I spy the little stinker ON the porch. My daughter helped me grab him, so we threw him in the car with us and called M to give her the good news.
But the story doesn't end here. Since it was so late, we agreed I would take him home with me for the night. I didn't want to put him in my goats without being able to get him used to them first, so I brought him up on the porch. We have a fenced in yard for the dog, so I thought that would be perfect for him.
About 6:00 the next morning, my husband wakes me up and asked if I moved him out to the goat pen. No, I replied, he's in Rosie's yard. Hubby said "Nope, he's not".
Sometime during the night, evidently he jumped the dog fence or the gate on the porch and somehow weaseled his way into my goat pen. He and Molly, my pygmy here next to him, really took a liking to each other. They may have had a love encounter during the night. I hadn't noticed any signs of her being in heat, but she sure was enjoying having him around. Rubbing up against him, sticking close to him... She's not a social goat, so this is pretty significant. I'm marking the date on the calendar just in case. I would be tickled to death if she is pregnant, because we were planning to breed them together anyway. She's about 4, so she's plenty old enough, and he's smaller than her, so no worries there.
After breakfast Saturday morning, we got the three stooges reunited finally and made a ten year old boy very happy. But a word of advice to my friend M: as some of your other friends suggested, please change the does' names!!! No more Gypsy or Dora (the explorer)!
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