The weather is warming up enough that I've been letting the babies out in the corral at the mini barn. Even on chillier days the afternoons are a little softer, and they can gallop and gambol and tear around outdoors if even for just two or three hours. They get the fidgets out of their feet, do some exploring, and then hole up in the mini barn and nap until I come to carry them back into the heated safety of the U pen.
Everything has gone just fine until a couple of days ago, when I discovered Chablis and Shandy, Paisley's twin girls, wandering through the front yard. Everyone else was where they belonged. It was just those two vagabonds who were drifting toward the corral gate, wondering why their friends were all on the other side, and apparently also now wondering if they could get back in and join them.
No problem, I told them, and shoved the little stinkers back through the gate where they belonged. And how the heck had they gotten into the front yard anyway? I had already gone over the section of fence bordering the yard with a fine-toothed comb. But these were goats we were talking about, and so I began another tour of inspection along the fence between the kids' corral and the big goats' pasture.
And yup, there it was. A cushy spot where the welded wire had been broken and unraveled, exposing the wider gaps of the cattle panel underneath. An easy squeeze for a couple of curious kids to conquer.
A good chunk of that afternoon was devoted to cutting out the old wire and securing a section of new wire in its place. Haha, problem solved.
All babies back in the corral where they were supposed to be.
Uh-huh, yeah, until the next day. Chablis and Shandy just scooted farther west along the dividing fence, found another cushy spot (dang, really?), and performed their easy-squeezy routine again. By this point I was becoming truly annoyed. Not only were they deliberately searching for an escape hatch, but they were leaving the relative safety of the corral and mini barn and sallying forth into dangerous lands.
First stop: the pasture. That put them in contact with the adult goats, who are not fond of interlopers.
Second stop: Mocha's corral. This was more worrisome. Mocha, being a good upstanding donkey, abhors dogs and anything even remotely resembling a dog. And scampering baby goats resemble dogs quite a lot. Mocha distrusts and despises them and has tried to kill baby goats in the past. In order to get from the mini barn to the front yard, Chablis and Shandy were ducking through the pasture fence, cutting a sharp ninety to the west, and racing along the fence until they got to Mocha. Her fence came out perpendicular, running north to south, barring their way. Undaunted, the two intrepids squirted through that cattle panel, darted across her perilous pen, wiggled between her gate and its gatepost, and bingo, there they were in the front yard, yelling and galloping back to the outside of their own corral gate.
So obviously, I had some legitimate concerns. I scooped up the wayward children, bundled them back into the indoor U pen, and worked on the fence again until I infuriatingly ran out of wire, about three feet short.
However, today help has arrived. My faithful, long-suffering daddy has come, hauling in some supplies, and some wire, and finishing up the work on the fence. And Chablis and Shandy, along with their mischievous cohorts, are right back at the mini barn where they're supposed to be, thank you very much. We'll see how long they stay there.
