I knew the moment I finished creating the make-shift maternity/ new kid pen for our goat mother and new baby that it wasn’t secure and it was a poor job. The way one looks at any job that has just been performed half-assed, reassuring one’s self that it is indeed fully-assed and just fine, even though you know better. With this I had no excuse, but I decided to leave the “farmer rigged” goat maternity ward and go back inside and see what happens.
Rufus just hanging out
An hour later, I came back outside and low and behold, I had two goats that weren’t supposed to be in the maternity ward, performing the equivalent of older siblings running up and down the hospital hallways unsupervised. Right there in the middle of it all was Rufus! Yes, Rufus, our one and only Billy Goat and resident stud. I guess I should cut him some slack as he is the proud new Papa to be, maybe he just wanted to hand out Cigars. However, with Billy Goats and their behavior, you are always quickly and rudely pulled back to reality.
It was obvious to see that Rufus was the culprit as he was looking at me with his big, bug-eyes while sections of woven wire fencing still hung from his horns. Deeply relishing his 2 minute destruction of what took me over an hour to make. Like a toddler tangled up in the tinsel from the Christmas tree, who stumbles, falls and takes the whole tree with them, he sits there looking at me and saying, ”This is fun, and isn’t it funny!”
I think to myself, “This is not fun, and it is definitely not funny. I am neither having fun nor being funny, period.”
The tricky part of working on anything in a goat yard while a Billy Goat is present is that the Billy Goat is present. The shear presence of a Billy Goat on a Farm changes a farm. Kind of like the presence of a dirty old uncle at a family event always changes the family event. If he isn’t leering at your sister, commenting how pretty she is and how much she has grown up. Then he is rough housing with you on a level on par with Ultimate Fighting, and you just want to get away.
A Billy Goat is horny, has an insatiable curiosity and is horny. Did I mention he is horny? And the curiosity part means that if anything happens, he is there in the middle of it making it all about him. Remember the dirty old uncle, yeah you get the picture.
“Woo Hoo” he says to me with his eyes as I walk in the yard to start my repairs. “What’s up buddy?? You want to play??”, he continues on.
“No Rufus, I don’t want to play, particularly your style of play” I say.
“Oh Come on, it will be fun”, I imagine him saying as he snorts and flicks his horns.
I carry a fiberglass livestock stick that I can use to fend off Rufus and keep him away from me. With me, he only wants to play (thank God), which entails standing on his hind legs to become 7’ tall and wanting to butt heads, lock horns and everything else male goats do. The other female goats who are present look at me like, “Where is my fiberglass whooping stick?” Her looks say it all, “I needed one of those damn things earlier today and where were you, oh that’s right, inside the house. After all buddy, you’re the one who moved his ass back in here with us, like we would enjoy him and his CONSTANT ATTENTION. I mean seriously, the son of a bitch never leaves us alone and he is always horny. Always!”
After tapping Rufus out of the way, I try to go about my mending of the wire fence, clipping wire here, retying there. It is a tricky process as I have to always keep one eye on him and one eye on what I am doing, he is constantly walking up behind me, checking things out. My wife tells me that I am overly paranoid and that he is just curious, but I say “nah nah nah, this is a guy thing and he wants to challenge me. To see whom the bigger Billy really is.”
This go on for a while, things seem to be going fine, but then when I am not paying attention, I get separated from my sacred stick. Like Gandalf from Lord of The Rings without my staff, my powers are greatly reduced. Rufus moves in, tries to butt me and of course since I am a guy, I react more aggressively than I should.
I grab him by the horns (you know, grab the bull by the horns) and hold his head down, demanding to him “You want some of this, you want some of this! I know you don’t want some of this, you cannot handle it!” My wife just rolls her eyes and walks away. Now she has full proof to back her theories that I have lost my mind.
He is bucking and flaying his head around, enjoying the moment way more than he should and certainly more than I am. It takes an incredible amount of energy and strength to hold a Billy Goat down and I finally give up and release him. He backs away, snorts, palls the ground and then rears up in the air, again to his over 7’ height. “Awesome man, this is fun”, he seems to say to me.“No Rufus, no. Get down you SOB”, I holler out. Luckily I am reunited with my staff of power and I poke and prod him with it till he realizes that I am back in control.
Rufus displaying his next trick.
He backs up and goes for his next move or trick in his bag that he pulls out when defeated but still trying to show his dominance. He bends his head towards the ground and proceeds to do what all Billy Goats have been doing for thousands of years. He urinates all of his face, goatee, underside and backs of legs. Once he is convinced that he has thoroughly doused himself with his equivalent to Drakkar Noir to goats, he throws his head back with furious abandon and curls his top lip, grinning his teeth at me.
This part is almost worse than the urinating on oneself, actually it is. He takes such pride in this horrific act, that after he throws his head back to the sky announcing to everyone look at me and what I just did, he curls his upper lip showing off his teeth.
Yes, a full out Elvis style lip curl that he holds in pose for several seconds. I am convinced after witnessing this numerous times,. that Elvis actually was exposed to goats at an early age and saw Billy Goats do this lip curl and that is where he learned it. At least he did not repeat the golden shower part of the segment.
The Elvis Lip Curl
After this dramatic display, I quickly go about finishing my reinforcement work of the pen and get the heck out of Dodge. I tell myself that I shouldn’t be insulted by Rufus and his shenanigans, after all, this is not unusual behavior, just a goat being a goat. I am the one who chose to have him live here and use his services. He is after all the resident stud.
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