West Texas Goats

Frogs in My Formula got me all inspired with her uni-nut goat story (yeah, you really should check it out), so here is my West Texas Goat story.

When I was a kid, our property included a full city block that had to be mowed (I have mowed that son-of-a-biscuit with a push mower, too, which is when I learned to say the alphabet backwards super-fast, but that’s a different story).  It also included a bunch of wooded property past the fence that had tall grass.

One summer we became inundated with ticks.  There were so many ticks everywhere that they were coming into the house, climbing up curtains.  I was six years old and an expert at tick removal.  It was worse than Arachnophobia, and it was real life.  My dad tried to burn down the wooded area to eradicate the ticks, but the fire department came and shut him down (that was very exciting, by the way).

Being the good West Texas guy that he is, he improvised and bought some goats cheap.

My sister and I LOVED those goats.  We visited them every day.  We petted them and named them and talked to them.  They were FAMILY, for a whole summer.  (And every time we went to pet the goats we had to strip naked and inspect ourselves for ticks.)

At the end of the summer, when the great Tick Infestation had ended and all the tall grass had been eaten and had gone dormant, my dad had a huge barbeque.  With a big pit in the ground.  About halfway through the party, my sister and I are wandering around, happily gnawing on ribs, when she asks where the goats are.

Then we ask my dad.  And he and all his friends laugh their butts off.  Because apparently this whole situation is really funny after you’ve had a case of beer and half a goat for dinner.

Growing up in West Texas was HARD, y’all.