This week, shocking animal shenanigans left barnyard creatures reeling and caused humans to question their eyesight … and their sanity.
“I thought I was crazy,” said farmer Joe Johnson.
Kindhearted Joe and his wife, Bridget, live on a small Ohio farm and take in strays: aging livestock, abandoned horses, homeless dogs, feral cats, random chickens. When Ramona the rescue sheep became so obsessed with kids she repeatedly tried to steal baby goats, the Johnsons brought in a ram to help Ramona start her own family. She ignored the ram, then to everyone’s surprise, turned up pregnant anyway.
When Ramona gave birth to Clara, Bridget exclaimed, “Well, who is this? That’s a goat not a sheep.”
And then, as the story in the local paper put it, “All eyes turned to a 2-year-old goat named Karev.”
“Karev, he is a little bit of a player,” said Joe.
And that makes his daughter, Clara, a geep — half goat, half sheep.
The phenomena is so rare that no statistics exist on them. The few that are conceived almost never live past birth, as the two species have a different number of chromosomes, confusing Mother Nature. Yet Ramona and Karev, having defied biology, thrown caution to the wind, and indulged their forbidden lust, seem to have produced a healthy love child with the head of a goat and the body of a sheep. Everyone’s bleating, braying, and clucking about it. But I’m not one to gossip, so — as the shepherds like to say — ewe didn’t hear this from me.
I’ve never seen an actual geep, but this week I was lucky enough to meet a human whose job title (and I’m not making this up) is Goddess of Goats. Deborah Blum runs an animal sanctuary called Goatlandia, 36 country acres in Sebastopol, CA where 70 goats do roam, along with assorted sheep, pigs, alpacas, peacocks, chickens, and more.
How do you get to be a Goat Goddess? Deb’s delightfully checkered past includes working as a swimwear designer, restauranteur, and commercial pilot. Sixteen years ago she became aware of the abuses connected with animal agriculture and decided we humans had to do better by our animal neighbors.
Now she rescues critters destined for slaughter because they are unwanted, sick, born with congenital issues, or male on a dairy farm that only values milk-producing females. Some are eventually adopted by carefully vetted families, all are welcome to live out their lives in Goatlandia. As you can imagine, she has whopping feed bills and vet fees, and much of her time is spent asking people for money.
“Nonprofit fundraising is hard enough when you’re doing cats and dogs and kids with cancer,” she told me, “but when you start rescuing the animals that most people eat, fundraising gets even more difficult.”
She’s been fortunate to find animal-loving neighbors who support the sanctuary, and she’s excited about a new fundraising effort: the Thrifty Goat second-hand shop.
My sister Kate volunteers there and lured me up to this week’s grand opening by promising I could interview a couple of “celebrity goats.”
Just two months old, Olive and Jason were silky and sweet, and like most celebrities, seemed happy simply to be petted and admired. No, I didn’t get any quotable quotes, but I felt Olive and I had bonded when she tried to eat my pen.
Hobnobbing with members of the goat community reminded me of the time I came upon an itinerant street performer in Seville who urged a billygoat up a ladder to teeter on a tiny platform. I was anxious that he (the goat, not the street performer) might fall, but then I came to my senses. Goats have cloven hooves that can pinch like fingers, with hard outer shells for a firm grip and soft rubbery inner pads for traction. Compared to his natural habitat, this climb was child’s play.
We humans may not be blessed with feet quite that practical, but some of us (not me) ascend to great heights anyway. Remember Dr. Art Ulene, former Today Show medical correspondent? This week he announced he’s about to celebrate his 90th birthday by becoming the oldest person to summit Africa’s highest peak, Mt. Kilimanjaro. It’s a 50 mile hike ascending nearly 20,000 feet. Having once been as high as 14,000 feet in Nepal, where the air was so thin I couldn’t walk and breathe at the same time, I cannot imagine what the summit’s air — if any — would feel like.
When an NPR interviewer asked how he was preparing, Dr. Ulene explained he used the two-gelato-shop method, “I got to be honest about it, I don’t like exercise. But I say to myself, you know, if you just get out the door and walk to the nearby gelato place a mile and a half away, you could have a small gelato. And that gets me right out the door. And some days I say I’m not happy with a small gelato. I want the big cup, and I want two flavors. So I walk four miles to get it.”
Now that’s a sensible training regimen! I firmly believe exertion should be rewarded with lavish treats.
That’s why I packed a really delicious picnic lunch last Wednesday for the Birds & Blossoms nature hike I’d given Rich for his birthday. It hit all the right notes: birdwatching, wildflowers, and a expert nature guide leading a small group. True, I was a tiny bit worried about the length — four hours — but that included a lunch break. The literature mentioned a wide fire road and frequent stops. The weather forecast predicted mild 75-degree weather.
We’d be fine.
The heat hit me the moment I stepped out of the car. It was already in the mid 80s and rising fast toward the 90s. The fire road, covered in hazardous loose shale, climbed steeply and offered no shade, no place to sit, no cool, inviting café serving iced espresso. I drank water, but still felt flushed, then dizzy. I realized this wasn’t so much a nature hike as a death march.
Our guide’s warnings about ticks, Lyme disease, and rattlesnakes didn’t concern me in the slightest because obviously I would die of heatstroke long before anything managed to bite me. I wondered what would happen if I just sat down and refused to move. Was Rich strong enough to carry me bodily down the hill? Would 911 work out here? How long it would take a life flight helicopter to arrive?
Sliding across a rough patch of shale, I thought, “I wish I was a goat right now. Where are those cloven hooves when you need them?”
After two hours, Rich and I agreed this had long since stopped being fun, and we said good bye to the group and started the long trek back downhill.
I carefully did not take any photos to show what we looked like by the time we reached the car. But two days later, when I saw these leftover cupcakes — melted by the sun, bounced around the back of the car, smeared across the inside of their box — I realized this was exactly how discombobulated I felt after that hike. Never again. Hard climbs are for mountain goats, geeps, and people with something to prove, but they are definitely a thing of the past for this human.
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