My Gentle Barn (7 page)

I had a new understanding of why most rescuers didn’t have children, and why most parents weren’t rescuers. Every day spent with my beautiful new son, I was further reassured that I’d made the right decision in shutting down my rescue operation.

While
I
had pulled inward in response to the new little being in our home, wanting to spend every available moment watching our son, Scott had the opposite—and very male—response of turning into an “über-provider.” In his effort to protect and provide for our baby he took on extra jobs, adding to his already long workdays and even working some weekends. He came home at night absolutely spent and had no desire to participate in our nightly ritual of walking the dogs. I understood that he was exhausted working to provide for us, but I missed
him on the nightly dog walks. The world of animals that we had shared was now mine alone, and I felt more and more abandoned to deal with the needs of all of these beings—human and animal—on my own. Scott, in turn, started to feel annoyed by my constant requests that he join me in dog duties when he was so tired. And before Jesse was three months old, a distance began growing between Scott and me—a gap that would prove difficult to bridge.

As Jesse grew, I saw that he was a particularly strong little boy, climbing and pulling himself up onto chairs before he could even walk. He started walking early, at ten months, and soon he was strutting around the house or yard with his tummy sticking out, shoulders back, and a look of determination on his face.
The world is my oyster. Ready or not, here I come
. He would gather up sticks and rocks all over the yard and make little piles of his booty. He would climb into or on top of anything that stood still, occasionally including the dogs. And he’d always try to help out with whatever tasks I was trying to accomplish. When Jesse was nearly a year old, I took several days to dismantle a low brick wall that surrounded the patio. The first day, Jesse watched for a while from the baby carrier on my back, then he demanded to be put down. Once on his feet, he picked up a brick with his pudgy but very strong little arms and carried it to the small garden-wheelbarrow I was using to cart the bricks to a stack behind the barn. He half-lifted, half-pushed the brick up into the wheelbarrow. Then he went back for more. The bricks and the wheelbarrow became his favorite new toys. As soon as we went out into the yard in the morning, he would squirm until I set him down, and he’d strut to the empty wheelbarrow and climb in, waiting for his favorite game to begin. The game consisted of me pushing the wheelbarrow as fast as I could around the barnyard as Jesse squealed in delight, his dog “siblings” chasing alongside. The game ended when I began huffing and puffing and could push the wheelbarrow no farther, at which point Jesse climbed out and went in search of bricks.

I loved watching him explore and learn about his environment,
but the more he began to individuate from me—starting to communicate what he liked and didn’t like and wanting to walk more than to be carried—the more I grew restless. When he’d been a tiny baby, his helplessness had made me feel so absolutely necessary to his survival. A lioness prepared to lay down my own life to protect him. Once he started becoming his own little person, with such an air of independence, I started feeling an old familiar tug, the same tug I’d always felt once a rescued dog was happy and well adjusted.
Mission accomplished, let’s go rescue another
. I couldn’t just coast. I wasn’t wired that way. I yearned for something to fill me with purpose, to make me feel necessary, like I wasn’t just taking up space on the planet. I began daydreaming about visiting the animal shelter, just to see who was there.

Yet an equally strong pull was keeping me away from the pound. I finally, for the first time ever, was having a normal life. Sure, I still had a bunch of dogs and cats, but they were no longer the driving force. Having and raising a child had thrown me into the midst of ordinary women who were married and raising families. I hung out with other mothers when I took Jesse to the park, and I played with the dogs at the dog park and did projects in the yard with Jesse on my hip or playing nearby. I was amazed I’d been able to be normal for this long, while still in one piece, and I was determined to stay on track. So I tried as best I could to rein in these feelings of restlessness and stuff them deep in a box at the back of my heart.

It was right around this time, when Jesse was a year old and I was fighting to protect my new normalcy, that I was running an errand one morning with Jesse and saw something I’d never seen before. We were driving across the sprawling San Fernando Valley, which is flat and stretches to the ends of the earth in a monotonous grid of tract housing and strip malls. The orange orchards and farmland that had once filled this basin had left behind only vestiges, a stand of orange trees here, a scrap of field there. The Valley could be baking hot in the middle of winter, and this was one of those days, so the windows of the car were
rolled down in an effort to stir up some semblance of a breeze. At one point as we drove along I began to smell something foul, like fertilizer but much worse. Then I saw a stretch of chain-link fence that spanned an entire city block, and behind the fence was an odd assortment of old wood sheds. I slowed, and the stench filled the entire car. Then I saw the animals. Goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, as well as a circle of ponies attached to a red metal carousel. The place was crammed with animals.

I told myself to just keep driving. I was a rescuer in recovery, and this was just the sort of thing that could knock me off my track. But I found myself pulling over to the curb. I got out and took Jesse out of his car seat and grabbed the baby sling. “We’re just going to have a little look,” I told him. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

As soon as we walked under the peeling, painted sign that said
PETTING ZOO
, I saw the source of the stench. There was animal excrement everywhere—not just the usual zoo poop, but days and days of accumulated excrement. The animals themselves were listless. The pigs were lying in their own feces because there was nowhere clean for them to be. Despite the heat there was no drinking water out for any of the animals, and the entire time my nostrils were filled with a stench so thick I could hardly breathe. To my amazement, tourists were everywhere, snapping pictures of their kids left and right—standing in front of a llama with horribly matted fur or petting a starving goat. Didn’t these people smell the stink or recognize the suffering? Then we came to the horses, who were being beaten into giving pony rides as the kids’ parents captured it on film.

I swallowed back my nausea, knowing that I was on shaky ground. I was angry at how these animals were being treated, but I also knew I couldn’t take this on. I had a one-year-old and a husband and a new, normal life. I couldn’t save a whole zoo full of animals.

“OK, Jess, let’s go now,” I said, and I picked him up and headed toward the front gate. But before I could get there, before I could put
this whole sad, miserable mess of a zoo safely behind me, I saw this one particular goat.

She had a big belly—like she was about to give birth—and hooves so overgrown she could barely walk. Her legs were bowed because of those wild, curling hooves, and her coat was a filthy, matted gray. On her back leg was a tumor that was oozing pus and blood. Like all the other animals, her despondency was palpable, but this goat was different somehow. She looked me right in the eye, as though some hope still remained in her wracked little body. And with those soulful eyes she reached inside me and put a stranglehold on my heart. I could just hear her craggy, Eeyore-like voice in my head.
Oh … thanks for noticing me
.

At that moment I knew I was done for. I was going to be taking home a goat.

As I headed to the front kiosk of the petting zoo, I wasn’t planning or scheming or even thinking about my childhood vision of having a place where animals and people healed one another. In fact, that vision had been sealed tight and tucked away at the back of my heart time and time again and had sort of gotten stuck there. All I knew was that this goat needed help and that I needed to be the one to help her.

It’s just one little goat
, I told myself.
It’ll be like having one more dog—nine dogs instead of eight … ten if she’s pregnant
.

But the owner didn’t see it the way I saw it. “I ain’t sellin’ my animals,” she said in a voice rough as gravel. She was a big woman with unkempt hair and disheveled clothes, and she kept her arms crossed over her chest.

At first I’d asked if I could
have
the goat, figuring they would be
happy to get rid of an animal this bad off. When the owner had refused, I’d offered to pay.

Jesse squirmed, and I patted his back and shifted him in his sling. “What’s her name?” I asked.

The owner reluctantly revealed that this sad little creature was called Mary.

“Well,” I said, and I paused a second, knowing there would be no turning back, “the problem is, I told Mary I would help her. I can’t leave without her, so I’m going to stay here till you say yes.” I could feel my heart pumping fast and strong, as though my whole body were filling with fresh new blood, fresh new life. This was what I’d felt every time I’d found a bird fallen from her nest or taken the saddest, most broken dog home from the pound. I was being the voice for the voiceless. I was seeing this poor soul and speaking up for her. I was doing what no one else would do, what no one had ever done for me. Trembling with this surging life force, I knew I’d found my way back to that peculiar groove that had been carved out especially for me.

This aliveness carried me through the rest of the day as Jesse and I sat by Mary’s side, with tourists taking our picture. At closing time I asked the owner again if I could have or buy the goat.

Again the woman said no.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll be back to see Mary in the morning.”

At the crack of dawn the next day I got myself and Jesse dressed and we showed up once again at the petting zoo. We sat all day by Mary’s side, petting her and talking to her and giving her water from a bottle and a bowl that I’d snuck inside in my purse.

“Where’s Mary’s nose?” I would ask Jesse, and he would touch her soft nose with his little fingers. “Where is your nose?” I would then ask, and he’d touch his own nose. “Where are Mary’s feet?” I’d ask. We’d move on to stomach and chin and ears, and this was how our day went, with my son climbing in and out of my lap and Mary helping me teach him about himself and the world around him.

All through the day, Mary would find my eyes and lock her gaze onto mine. Those yellow goat eyes with pupils that narrow into thin, horizontal rectangles, like little mail slots for secret messages. She’d gaze at me again and again and send me tiny messages that beseeched me to please get her the hell out of there.

This went on day after day, with us showing up in the morning, sitting by Mary’s side for the entire day—leaving her only to take little side trips to the other animals to keep Jesse engaged. Every evening at closing time, I’d ask again to take the goat home, and each and every evening the woman said no. Jesse would conk out in the car on the way home, and I’d put him straight to bed. Scott would return late in the evening, and I tried more than once to explain what I was up to, warning him I might be bringing home a goat. But I didn’t get the sense that he believed me, even knowing what he did about my tendencies.

This zoo vigil lasted twelve days. On the thirteenth morning, the owner finally cracked. As soon as she spotted me, she practically yelled, “Fine, OK, take the goat!” and a cigarette cough shook her body. “But just get the hell out of here!”

With my heart full up to the brim, I carried Mary to my Ford Explorer with Jesse on my back. When we got home I shut the gate between the grassy yard and the barnyard, and carried Mary into the barn. All eight of my dogs lined up at the fence, yipping with tails wagging, eager to meet the new “dog.”

“Sorry, guys,” I told them. “Mary is very sick and very weak. She’s in no shape to play with you.”

I didn’t know a thing about taking care of a goat, but that was a small hurdle compared to the vigil I’d just carried out. I would learn about goats the way I’d learned about dogs and cats and birds and rabbits—through intuition, and by asking lots of questions. I called around for a referral for a veterinarian who treated goats and found one who made house calls with his mobile vet truck. When he arrived, I opened my big side gate, and he drove right into the barnyard and set
up shop. Dr. Geissen agreed that Mary looked pregnant, but after a thorough examination he determined otherwise.

“There are no fetuses,” he said. “She’s just been bred so many times, her belly has assumed that shape and stayed that way.”

I was relieved; not that I would have minded baby goats, but Mary’s body was in such bad shape, she needed all her energy for healing.

“Now, let’s have a look at that tumor,” the vet said, and he asked me to hold on to Mary so he could get a proper look.

The tumor was large and oozing and awful to look at, but it turned out to have a fairly small point of attachment to her leg. While Dr. Geissen collected his surgical gear from the truck, depositing it into large metal buckets, I waited with Mary, trying not to picture what he was about to do. For all my bravery in flushing wounds and administering subcutaneous fluids, I was actually quite squeamish. If I was the only one around, the force that drove me to help a hurting animal overrode my queasiness, but when there was a qualified professional present, I was more than happy to check out. I watched as far as the injections of anesthesia at several sites around the tumor, and then we waited about ten minutes for the area to get numb. But what the vet did next I can only guess at because I had my eyes squeezed shut, even as I kept Mary from walking away. By the time Dr. Geissen said, “OK, you can open your eyes now,” there was a clean, white bandage over the area where the tumor had been. I couldn’t go anywhere near the thought of what he had done with the thing once he’d removed it.