My Gentle Barn (8 page)

“Are there stitches?” I asked.

“Yes. I’ll come back in a couple of weeks to take the sutures out. Just make sure the area stays dry.” Dr. Geissen took a step back and cocked his head this way and that as he looked at Mary’s feet. “Of course, you’re going to have to trim those hooves.”

Well, I didn’t know the first thing about trimming hooves and asked if he could show me how to do it.

He went back to his truck and brought out some large clippers with a wide jaw. “These are hoof nippers,” he said. “They’re for horse
hooves.” And he explained that I wouldn’t even need to get a pair of these if I kept up with trimming. Once he’d cut off the bulk of the overgrowth—a good twelve inches of twisted hoof material—he said, “Do you have wire cutters?”

Yes, I had wire cutters. He instructed me to retrieve them so he could teach me to do it with my own tools.

Dr. Geissen trimmed the first hoof. It took a while because even with me trying to hold her still, Mary fought him all the way through it. Since she’d clearly never had her hooves trimmed, she wasn’t used to having her foot lifted and held and didn’t like it one bit.

“The more you do this, the more she’ll get used to it,” he said. And sure enough, by the second leg, she was already fighting a little bit less. Dr. Geissen pointed out the different parts of Mary’s foot. Goats have cloven hooves, which means the hoof is split into two halves. Looking from the bottom, each half has a teardrop-shaped toe, surrounded by hoof material, which protects the toes, just like human toenails. The toe and the surrounding toenail are both supposed to touch the ground, but Mary’s toe had not touched the ground in a very long time. Her toenails had long ago grown over the toe, obscuring it completely, and then twisted out to the front, making it very difficult for her to walk. After the second hoof was trimmed, the vet let Mary amble around a bit. She tested out her new hooves, lifting one and setting it back down, then another. When we brought her back for the third foot, she was more settled—like she had approved of the test drive and was ready to have all of her feet back in contact with the earth.

Dr. Geissen handed me the wire cutters. “Your turn,” he said.

I lifted Mary’s leg while he held her still. Even after I’d watched him trim the first two hooves, I worked slowly, unsure where the toenail ended and the toe began. The last thing I wanted to do was cut this poor goat; she had already been to hell and back and didn’t need any more pain inflicted on her.

When all four hooves were finally trimmed, Mary looked like a
different goat. She walked more freely and began to explore the yard, as though the procedure had returned to her a goat’s natural curiosity. But she was malnourished and quite weak, and her legs were still bowed from having walked around on those crazy hooves for so long. She also seemed to have a back problem, with one of her hind legs shorter than the other.

“There’s nothing really we can do for her legs and back,” the vet said. “You just give her good food and all this space to wander in and hopefully it rights itself over time.”

Gauging Mary to be an elderly goat, the vet suggested a diet of Bermuda hay (the usual goat diet) with a little alfalfa hay each day to supplement (for extra calories and minerals). Oat straw would serve as the best bedding, he said, since the straw fibers were tube-shaped and would hold heat. As soon as Dr. Geissen left, I made a trip with Jesse to the local feed store to buy bales of hay and straw. I scattered some hay out for Mary, and she happily began to munch. Then I pulled clumps of straw from the bale and shook it out over the floor of one of the stalls in the barn, fluffing it up so it would be nice and soft. After two minutes of this, the air was filled with straw dust, making me sneeze over and over. For the rest of the day and night I kept finding straw fibers in my hair, in my ears, and even in my underwear.

The next day I made calls to report the petting zoo. It wasn’t enough to save one animal. I wanted that place to fly right or be shut down.

“We have a file three feet high,” the guy at Animal Control said. “We’re working on it.”

The SPCA said pretty much the same thing.

Satisfied that the zoo was being taken care of, I settled in with my new goat, focusing on getting her healthy. To boost her immune system, I began her on a supplement of algae superfood. I had discovered this superfood a year and a half before when my dog China seemed to be on her last legs—incontinent, losing her fur, riddled with arthritis,
and barely able to see because of cataracts. I had lamented about China’s decline to a friend, who had suggested I give her the algae. With nothing to lose, I gave it a shot, and within three months China’s cataracts were gone, her fur had grown back, she had stopped peeing on herself, and she was hiking five miles a day with me. This miracle cure was now a staple in all of my dogs’ and cats’ diets, as well as in my family’s. Because it was an all-natural food, it could be fed—like any greens—to any animal. Now it was Mary’s turn to reap the benefits of the miracle algae.

On one of my feed-store runs to buy Mary more hay, I also learned about grain mash—a mix of bran, oats, corn, barley, alfalfa, molasses, and a little water—that would add minerals and calories to Mary’s diet and give her just a little extra plumpness. This was how I liked all my rescued animals to be. That
just a little extra
told everyone involved—especially the animal herself—that now she was living the good life. Now there was plenty and she’d never want for anything.

In the first few days after I’d brought Mary home, I brushed the mats out of her hair. Once her leg had healed, I washed her filthy coat, revealing that she was indeed white, not gray. With all the great supplementation, before long her coat grew in soft and shiny.

Although Scott was a little surprised that I’d actually won out in the goat standoff, he took it all more or less in stride. Mary wasn’t in the house, after all, and he rarely went out into the backyard since he got home so late from work. Scott’s and Mary’s lives didn’t often intersect.

One morning I sat in the yard with Jesse and watched Mary meandering through the dappled sunlight. Three months had passed since I’d brought her home, and Mary had reached a new level of vitality. She moved with ease. Her eyes shone. And she had attained the perfection of
a little bit extra
.

Wow
, I thought.
I did that
. Somehow I had forgotten just how good
I was at nurturing animals back to health. But there before me, in the form of a happy, healthy goat, was proof that my gift was alive and well.

I ran inside and got my camera and took several pictures of Mary in my yard. I needed to show the owner of the petting zoo just how healthy this goat was now.

I don’t know what grand delusion led me to think the big, gruff woman would be happy to see that I’d healed Mary, but an hour later when I stood in front of her with Jesse on my hip and handed her one photo after another, the woman simply grunted. I was even more disappointed to see that Animal Control and the SPCA had not made any headway at all; the zoo still looked and smelled just as dreadful, the animals were just as unhappy, and the tourists seemed just as oblivious. I noticed one baby goat, in particular, who was really sick. Delicate and white with spindly legs, he had green mucus running from his nose and seemed to be struggling just to breathe. I asked the owner what was going on with the little goat.

“I don’t know,” the big, gravel-voiced woman said. “He’s sick.”

“He needs medical attention,” I said.

To that the owner simply shrugged and swatted at a fly.

“Well, you saw how I healed Mary.” I paused, thinking,
Scott will understand; it’s just a baby
. “So, um, I’m going to take that little goat home and heal him too, OK?”

The woman shook her head, more in resignation than refusal. She’d probably never met anyone before who’d stood their ground with her like I did.

“How old is he?” I asked, and shifted Jesse to my other hip.

“I don’t know.” The woman frowned. “Maybe three months.”

“Where’s the mom? I mean, he’s probably too young to be separated from her.”

“Who knows where she is. Just take the baby.”

“But you do have the mom here?”

The woman heaved a deep sigh. “She doesn’t care about him. They don’t care about their babies. They’re just goats.”

I knew this wasn’t true. I’d seen mama animals in all kinds of species—from ducks to dogs to horses—nurture their babies and grieve when they were taken away; it couldn’t be any less true for goats. But I didn’t get the sense the owner was going to give in on this one, at least not that day, and that little goat needed medical help right away. I went back to the car and got the baby carrier and secured Jesse onto my back, then returned to the petting zoo. I picked up the tiny white goat, feeling his fragile ribs against my fingertips, and carried him back toward my car, but as I walked out the entrance I heard a frantic baaing behind me, followed by a crashing sound. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was the mom. She was running at the fence, bleating and baaing. One baby on my back and another one in my arms, I watched as a big brown-and-white goat tried to get out the gate, then under the fence, then over the fence, baaing frantically all the while.

I approached the fence, where the owner was trying to secure the she-goat with a lead. But the goat wouldn’t have it; she was trying to get through the fence to me, or rather to the little white goat in my arms. I understood; I would be just as furious if anyone ever tried to take Jesse from me.

“That’s the mom,” I said. A statement, not a question.

Reluctantly the woman nodded.

I loaded both the baby goat and the mama goat into my Ford Explorer. By this point, the owner understood that if she didn’t let the mom come home with me, she’d have a crazy woman camping out with her goats again.

When I got the two new goats back to my barn, the dogs lined up at the fence, their favorite place ever since the dividing gate had been shut. They wagged their tails and jumped and barked but, alas, they were deprived of two more potential playmates. Mary and the mama goat greeted each other with gentle “I know you” head bonks, and both the mama and Mary fussed over the frail little baby.

When Dr. Geissen came out, he told me the baby goat had pneumonia. We gave him antibiotics and lots of fresh water, and the mama
goat was at his side the whole time, nursing him and licking him. I started him right away on the superfood algae; by this point the stuff had worked miracles not only with dozens of dogs and cats, but also with Mary the goat, and I prayed it would help this baby, too.

I trimmed the mama goat’s nails. They weren’t as bad as Mary’s had been, since this mama was a relatively young goat, but her hooves had been neglected too. I filled more stalls with lots of fresh, fluffed-up straw (and more straw fibers got in my hair and ears and underwear). I made a run to the feed store to make sure this malnourished, nursing mama would have plenty of good nutrition to support both her body and her baby’s. Unlike Mary, these two goats had not been named, so when I finished getting them settled in, I sat for a long while and watched them explore their new home, and eventually the name Billy rose to the surface for the delicate white baby, and the name Sophie felt just right for the mama.

That night, I made sure to have a nice dinner ready before Scott got home. After we ate, I said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Scott’s face shifted through about three different emotions in half a second.

“It’s not bad,” I rushed to tell him, and he looked relieved. “I brought home another goat, but he’s just a tiny baby.”

Scott nodded cautiously.

“He’s super sick. I knew he’d die if I didn’t take him home. Turns out he has pneumonia.”

“You went back to the petting zoo.”

“Yeah. They haven’t shut it down yet.”

Scott went into the living room and turned on the TV.

I followed after him, saying, “I have one other thing to tell you.”

He gently shoved two cats and a dog off the couch so he could sit down. He slid back into the couch and said, “What’s that?”

“Well, I kind of brought home the baby goat’s mom, too.”

“Kind of?” Scott said.

“Did,”
I said. “I did bring home the mom, too.”

Within a couple of weeks Scott relaxed into the fact that we now had three goats. In reality, since he hardly ever saw them, I think he kind of forgot they were there. Jesse and I, on the other hand, spent practically the whole day, every day, with the goats. Jesse traveled around the barnyard on my hip or secured to my back in the baby carrier. We’d enter the barnyard in the morning with Jesse running ahead calling out, “Aminals! Aminals!” to our four-legged residents. He watched from his perch on my back as I mucked out the barn, fed the goats, and gave little Billy his supplements and medicine. I gave Billy superfood algae twice a day and marveled at what a good mother Sophie was, constantly nursing and grooming her baby. In just a few weeks, the team effort turned Billy’s pneumonia around, and he was soon romping around the yard, full of life and mischief. Now I had three happy, healthy goats, all of whom had attained the perfection of
just a little bit extra
.