Penelope

Today Is Winter Wine Land in Sonoma County and I was not aware of this until I drove to town to pick up jugs of bleach and long rubber gloves. Cars with couples passed me on my way to town on my usually sleepy road and through the windshields I could see and feel their expectation of drunken debauchery.  As the norm on these special occasions purple balloons were fastened on each winery driveway I passed, a beacon to plastic wrist-banded ticket holders. A day that not a few long years ago, I too would be dressed up for, but today I am wearing my filthy farm clothing. My jobs to clean, scour, and sanitize the barn. I really wasn’t prepared for this. I only had a vet to ultrasound my new goats on Monday. And I didn’t really need the ultrasound, the goats looked pregnant enough I just wanted to get to know the mobile vet. Just in case. After 3 of my new goats were confirmed pregnant. I decided to have the vet check little Penelope, one of my original goats. I just thought they would be benign. Weeks earlier I had felt the presence of a couple lumps on her back flank. The vet felt her all over with his big rough hands. He then turned around looked at me and said “ You should cull this goat immediately.” He then explained Caseous Lymphadenitis (CL), which is a contagious disease in goats and sheep. Where typically the worst you would get is a single cyst, Penelope had them on all of her lymph nodes. What was worse, the doc popped one on her cheek making her immediately more contagious to the other animals. Timothy swung open the gate, and everyone bounded to get out of the barn. I stood there shaken. I was stunned I hadn’t thought about death. Everyone was getting along and they all looked so happy. It was especially hard because Penelope was the only goat I had actually named. As I stood dumb, I was almost knocked over by the rush to get out. Penelope didn’t move at all. She must have known. The gate was then shut. Penelope and “Goiter” as we called her were condemned to die. I don’t know how they both could have known. We could have saved Goiter, she had a cyst when we first got her, but she was fine now. She stood in solidarity with her little friend. Now with Penelope so grossly infected, and baby goats on the way, this was the only choice. The hardest part. Was that it was not immediate. Our goat dispatcher was busy and I had to live with, and could not stop thinking about the condemned for three days while they were in the barn while the others were locked out. I couldn’t stop thinking about what they must be thinking? I had nightmares. Although CL is contagious, it is the open sore that is serious. We mistook Goiter’s cyst for what we thought was a foxtail digging it’s way out through her cheek. If we had only known, we could have saved Penelope and we could have saved me from learning to love both of them. I had expected them to be my goats, to be mothers to future baby meat goats. I spent my afternoons with them. They were skittish when they first arrived, they now let me scratch them behind the ears and feel their fur on their flanks and backs. They had gotten used to me. That strange girl who liked to sit and watch them do their goat activities.