Enya and Loreena.

Licorice walking with her girls.

On March 30, Licorice finally gave birth. Fortunately, we were ready; Twilight began to be very aggressive, so I re-arranged the front of the shed so that my other goatie would fit there. When I wanted to try whether Licky would be better off without the nagging sister and her triplets, and closed her off for the night, she kept bleating. I thought she was lonely, until I realized after some time that her nervousness and bleating were from the arriving birth.

To our surprise, Licky had two girls. Hence the name Ozzy remained unapplied this year; instead we have Enya and Loreena (McKennitt). Enya has a funny white face (similar to last year's Rocket, she, too, looks a bit like a cow); Loreena is the only baby goat without white markings — pale brown with black overcoat. Summarily, we got two boys and THREE girls. Goats usually litter a majority of boys over girls; last year we had three boys and no girl, so this year it balanced out to a common ration of 1:2. Of three rounds of baby goats, the totals are four girls (Starburst, Bonnie, Enya and Loreena) and eight boys (Willy, Pixel, Blackberry, Casper, Pluto, Rocket, Freddy and Mick).

Triplets cause much mischief — turned a hay bin into their bed.

Lori is such a little baby.

Loreena brought us some real stress. When she would hang onto Licky's throat wattles instead of udder teats on her first day, we found it funny. Yet Lori still did not realize her mistake, so I grabbed a syringe and rubber tips from the bottle and tried to stuff some milk into her at least that way. Unfortunately the goatie still did not understand and within a single day got so weak that she would just lie in my lap and let the milk flow out of the other side of her little mouth; we called a vet. She got various injections and dextrose, with only a hope it would prop her up a bit. It did not, so in the afternoon we drove her to the clinic, where they fed her milk through a tube directly to her stomach. We were issued the tube with instructions how to feed her, and went back home.

In the evening and through the night (yes, I was getting up every three hours) Loreena drank some from the bottle, but refused again in the morning, so we had to apply the tube again and force milk into her. Either she understood my threats that I would keep on feeding her through the tube, or she finally recovered a bit, but since then she began to drink from her mother, and even figured out from which end to expect milk.

Tom had made an appointment for a driving test by the beginning of April. He had his temporary learner's permit since November, which allowed him to drive in the company of an adult licensed driver. He was barred from driving minors except family members, and so on. Now that he passed the driving test, he was issued a real license, albeit still with some limitations (like not being allowed to drive late at night) — but he can drive solo, which is a great relief. Tom's shooting team meets at a range on the hill across our valley — it's ten minutes away on dirt roads, but the fact we no longer have to drive him there had freed up our time. And we have acquired another driver in the family, who can be dispatched to fetch food from town, and who can run his own errands without mommy at his heels. Since we live some distance away from town with no mass transit, a driver license is a necessity.

Princess Loreena.

Enya is a strong and precocious rascal.

With Tom's license, our household car park grew by one Horace. It's an old and beat-up Subaru, which Tom received as his own wheels. We opted for a Subaru in the end because a four wheel drive is needed for many dirt roads and snow situations — in contrast to a Ford, Subaru does not guzzle — and does not tip over. It has a weaker engine, so you would not tend to show off — and its beat-up-ness can eventually hide a dent or two, should Tom happen to back into some garbage bin or meet a sign post. The name Horace originates with Pratchett's feisty cheese — Horace is a wheel of blue cheese so ripened, it comes alive. And Tom's Subaru is blue.

One of the first trips Horace has undertaken, was the ride with Lori to the vet's — I was glad that Tom could drive and I could sit with a limp baby goat in the back seat, focus on the goat, and not drive. Further, Tom took up Lisa and drove her to a hair salon; eventually he drove to get a haircut himself. Now he drives with Lisa to shop for their personal items (like fodder for Lisa's rats) and so on. Tom and I could venture out cross-country skiing, when it snowed nicely again in mid-April — and we did not have to take the pick-up, which guzzles gas.

Enough snow came down for skiing in mid-April.

While I at his age...

In the meantime, tenants have moved into our house in town. They appear to be very nice and unproblematic, but even so there was a lot of running around and arrangements to be made. We naturally had to have a lease contract, which we got from a lawyer, to be sure proper rules were applied. When I went to take pictures of the house for reference how it looked at the move-in (to avoid misunderstandings by the end of the term), I noticed that a fence had collapsed in the back yard — and a fix needed arranging. Then we had to set up a tour through the house with the tenants and signing of all papers. And discovered that a cracked window, one the original owner was obligated to fix, wasn't fixed. Which brought a powerful deja vu — we had dealt with another such broken window left un-fixed on our ranch house; situation has repeated itself. A different window company was involved, but the story was similar — fix got paid by the original owner, who thus met his obligations, but did not follow up by checking whether the work was done, and the window people did not feel particularly eager to rush things. Eventually they consented to deal with me, and even agreed to actually fix the window. Meanwhile a bird flew into ANOTHER window, cracking it horribly. Another discussion with the window people ensued, whether I am to bring two windows, and whether they'd be willing to fix both. I opted for a sunny, warm day, so that our tenants would not chill unduly, drove the windows to the shop (I did not dare to expect them to come and pick them up) — the glazer told me with a stone face that they'd be ready in, say, two weeks, as they were out of glass. Fortunately the tenants are golden, they said it was OK and they would cover the opening up somehow. Well. And to top it off, when the windows were finished, the glazers called the ORIGINAL owner to come pick them up. Fortunately he was cogent enough to fetch our contact through the real estate agency, and thus we at least LEARNED about it.

Then a notice come that we are expected to pick up our bushes as ordered for our property. We had purchased our house with some 200-250 bushes and small trees planted on the property. Irrigation is routed to all of that — but some plants did not survive previous summer, and did not come back after my fall watering. More plants perished during winter — mostly pines, which don't like our wind. Thus I had ordered fifty bushes from the Conservation District. A local office sells seedlings of bushes and trees at very affordable prices, to help the population forest the prairie — which subsequently manages surface water better and holds on to topsoil, instead of turning into a dust bowl — as it happened in the 30's to Oklahoma and adjacent prairie states.

Boys lay-abouts.

Birds flock to Snow White, mice follow her...

I had filed the order at the time when other worries dominated my horizon, as we had freshly moved in and spring seemed far away — still I had hoped that offered seedlings were plants suitable for our climate, and shooting more or less from the hip, I picked twenty five wild currants, and twenty five wild roses. Currants because I like to eat them, and wild roses because I love their wild blossoms. And given that I have seen both thrive near our cottage in the Czech-Moravian Highlands, I said to myself that they could do well here too.

One has to pick up one's order at the office on this one specified day. So I took Sid and the Ford, to have room and a helping hand in loading them, and we set out. It almost floored us when a chap from the office handed us two thin bundles. He said we were not the only people with ideas of whole pallets with plants, or seedlings in planters — he said people normally show up with trucks and trailers. Well, better to make a mistake this than the other way: I could have shown up with a plastic bag, discovering I need a flatbed.

Yet with these seedlings, I had to deal with another essential issue — they were supposed to be planted within forty-eight hours — but within those forty-eight hours we got endowed by a foot of snow (so Tom and I managed to go cross-country skiing once again), and night temperatures dropped to ten degrees. After much deliberation and searching I decided that the plants would do better in a bucket of sand in our garage, and I'd push them out after temperatures get a bit more civilized. In the end they had to stay in the buckets for almost a week. Fortunately, Tom helped me a bit with planting — although I was planting them in prepared spots (which, nevertheless, needed weeding out, and a hole had to be dug for the new resident), it still took me two days. Plant, cover in, join up to irrigation, sprinkle with bark and pour water on top, to hold it together — all this at the perimeter of our property, where everything has to be carried out / rolled out on a wheel-barrel over several hundred yards.

...and bunnies.

A new wall grew in my garage.

Sid was out on his business trip to Texas at the time, so I really needed and appreciated Tom's help. During this trip of his, I have finally figured out what kind of cryptid I am (in our family, we are matching various types of humanoid, yet not quite human beings). I am a Snow White! Do you remember the scene from the classic Disney cartoon, where Snow White walks around in woods, and all kinds of animals flock to her? There. When grazing my goats, we are accompanied by a rabbit (the one that lives under our back porch), and the other day when I got up, we had a bird in our living room — apparently some kind of robin. He simply perched on our ceiling fan (probably having flown in through the door in the evening when I was airing the room); in the goat shed, I found a mouse in a bucket. All the critters just follow me around. That would be cute, but Disney somehow forgot to mention one basic fact — all these cute birdies and bunnies and mousies never stop pooping. I ended up with a soiled ceiling fan, a porch full of pellets, and I had to wash out the bucket.

I was looking forward to Sid's return and got ready — I bought a fun metal goat, which I arranged in a nook in our living room. Then I made a cactus blossom up. When the other day I bought a shelf for our toilet (for spare toilet tissues, cleaning wipes and similar toilet supplies), it impressed me as overly industrial, and so I bought a cactus. Sid liked it, yet expressed his doubts that it would survive in such dark room. I had to demonstrate that the cactus was made of rubber, and would not mind absence of light. Now I found rubber cactus blossoms at Wal-mart — I hope you agree that I could not miss such opportunity.

Future wind barrier.

Spring is here, our neigbor is buzzing around.

But on Saturday when Sid was bound to arrive, all that fun eluded me. Already on Friday evening my goat Licorice seemed strange, but it was obvious in the morning — she would not eat, tail stuck down, hunching up, empty gaze forward. I called veterinarian emergency (naturally, things like this never happen on, say, Tuesday noon, but on Saturday morning, outside regular office hours), and soon we were driving Licky to a hospital. There, the vet smelled her (which surprised me, but apparently goat breath can indicate digestive trouble), examined — and eventually stated that it's likely a lack of thiamine. My goat got several injections and we went back home. Yet she did not improve over the afternoon, so we jabbed her with more thiamine and waited. Alas, she was getting worse more than anything else, seemed disoriented and stiff, could not properly stand on her own legs — so we drove there again.

She got stronger injection, and I was issued a whole battery of syringes and needles, with advice — and by the second day Licky got much better, but still seemed clumsy and stiff for a few days. During those days when she was truly sick, she did not have much milk, and solved it in a true goaty fashion; started rejecting Loreena. She kept feeding her first born Enya, but chased Lori away, and I had to step in with a bottle. Despite milk formation recovery, Licky would rather walk around with a swollen udder than let her second-born baby drink. I intervened for some time by tying her up into the milking stand, where Loreena could drink and her mother could not chase her away, but even that stopped being effective. A combination of formula and remains of what I managed to milk, were Lori's only food. She sometimes manages to sneak in at an opportune moment and drink next to Enya, but it's not reliable.

It would seem that we experience much drama with goaties and their babies this year — but with easy to reach, friendly and goat-competent veterinarians at our back, everything is much easier — despite the problems being more serious than last year. It is important that in the end, all goats got through it all and lived; now we get to pay all the bills.