Goat-Sitting Gone Sideways

There are a lot of things I'm not great at—some of them being fashion sense, technology, cooking, and staying calm in the face of emergencies. My nervous system freaks out and I get all discombobulated.

My sister-in-law Cathy, on the other hand, is the GOAT. She’s a rock. Cool as a cucumber in the face of adversity, and she's helped me through many chaotic moments. She's exactly who I want beside me when things go sideways. (Miss you, Cathy!) Sadly, she lives in California, and couldn’t help when I had a recent goat-related emergency.

It was the dead of winter. Snow everywhere. Cold enough to freeze your nose hairs. My husband was in Cabo on a boys’ trip (don’t even get me started), and I was holding down the homestead solo. On top of that, we were goat-sitting for friends, and their cutest little doeling—Lucky—was temporarily staying with us.

I was in the garage, milking goats like usual, when I heard The Noise. A horrible, panicked bleating unlike anything I’d ever heard. It made my blood run cold.

I ran out and found little Lucky hanging upside down by her back hoof from the top of the fence. Apparently, she had climbed the mobile chicken coop (??) and attempted to leap the fence to get to her mama, who was inside the garage. But her hoof caught the top wire, and she got stuck. The more she struggled, the more it twisted and tightened.

I gently lifted her to take the weight off her leg—only to discover the wire was wrapped around her ankle like a tourniquet. It was tight. Really tight. There was no way I could free her without wire cutters.

And that’s when the panic set in.

My husband has roughly eleventy-thousand tools scattered in 30 different drawers, cabinets and tool chests, and I had no idea where the wire cutters were. I couldn’t leave her hanging to go search.

So I called for backup.

Friend #1’s husband: no answer.

Friend #2’s husband: no answer.

Friend #3’s husband: again, no answer.

It was Sunday and I knew they were all at church. I was striking out.

Desperate, I found the contact in my phone for a guy my husband knows in the neighborhood. He answered—praise Jesus—and I blurted out, “I have an emergency, Eric’s in Cabo, there’s a baby goat stuck upside-down in the fence, PLEASE BRING WIRE SNIPS AND HURRY!!!”

I'd rather be in Cabo. (AI made the fence go through the goat. Nice.)

While I stood there in the snow bundled up like an Eskimo, nose hairs freezing, silently

cussing out my husband in his swim trunks on his fishing boat in Mexico, I held up Lucky’s body to keep her weight off her leg while she flailed and screamed.

Approximately seven minutes later (which felt like 45), my neighbor arrived and cut Lucky free. She limped away on three legs, found her mama, and nursed. It took a few days, but luckily Lucky made a full recovery.

Moral of the Story:

1. Husbands should not leave their wives alone in winter to go to Mexico.

2. Good neighbors are absolute heroes.

3. Always know where your wire cutters are.