Beating the Cold Sasquatch Style

The day after the new goats arrived the weather finally cleared up enough that I could go sit with them in the back pasture. It had finally stopped raining, but was VERY windy and cold out. At this point the Nigerians were still keeping themselves segregated, even though the gate to the goat pen where Tierra and the angoras were was open. When I put my chair out there, they came right over to me as I stood surrounded by the rest of the group. Here's a couple videos I took one right after the other as soon as I sat down. As you can see, as soon as the Nigerians came close, Tierra hustled over to me and was in almost a frenzy to mark me as her territory.


As you can probably hear, Sahara is still almost unbearably noisy, but I'm hoping she'll calm down and quiet down as she gets used to the rest of us. I sat out there with all of them for almost an hour, and she literally did not shut up the entire time. Even as she's browsing and eating, she's still keeping up a steady stream of belch-sounding bleats. Between her constant chatter and the freezing cold, I finally had to get away from them and go back inside. But, I am very happy to report that Tierra did not head butt the new girls a single time. She did later on that evening, but that's mostly because they had gotten brave enough to enter the goat pen and investigate her lean-to, which she has yet to even let Louie and Lucy near. Oops!

One interesting thing did happen, though, when I got home from my new job at the library yesterday afternoon. Harmony and Sahara had gotten out of the back pasture and were milling around over by the pond! Oh, dear! It's my first case of escaped goat. My others have simply never wanted to escape, but the new girls do not see this place as home yet and also have a bad taste in their mouth about being terrorized by a huge Nubian. I'm thinking that they probably climbed up on the dog crate we had back there as their shelter, and jumped the fence. Stupidly, we had put it up against the fence as a perfect step for them. There was a single strand of barbed wire atop the fence from the previous owners, so that means the goats had to clear that on their way over. Ahhhh! We were out there in the dark cutting that evil stuff down by flashlight last night, along with putting some new hinges on the gate going from the goat pen into the back pasture, which had broken about a week ago. All of this in the dark, freezing cold. I, though, planned ahead for such instances. After being so miserably cold trying to spend some quality time with my goats, I knew something had to be done. I refuse to be miserable while doing chores and I also refuse to give up spending time with them all winter long. So, I bought a one-piece zip up thingy from the hunting and fishing department at Walmart. Ha! It's great, because now that I'm having to get up really early to do my chores before taking Ayden to school then going straight to work, now I can do my chores in my work clothes because I just zip the darn thing right up over my clothes! It's awesome. But not pretty. I plan to spiff it up a bit, maybe silkscreen some polka dots all over it or something. ;) I'm hesitant to even post a picture, but in the interest of full disclosure and the ability to laugh at one's self, here you go. Honestly, though, I really don't care how stupid I look as long as I'm warm. I really don't. You see, I spent about 5 of my young formative years in Mexico, and my little body did not get under about 50 degrees the whole time. I swear it's broken something inside me thats supposed to keep me at a decent temperature. So my husband can laugh all he wants, but as I was holding the flashlight for him last night as he was screwing the new hinges on the gate, and shivering and miserable, I stood there toasty warm in my Sasquatch Suit. So there!