Today began like any
other Sunday…Keika wanted to be let out about 6 AM, and since the door was
opening, I also took advantage of the opportunity to stretch my legs a bit.
The handlers went for
their Sunday morning walk. Keika and I held down the fort. Here are a few
pictures of their excursion….
The morning was
progressing like any other weekend morning. Usually more is scheduled than can
possibly fit into a single day. But today there was more excitement in the air.
Their friend Bill was scheduled back into Argentina
Around midday, female
handler (FH) was cleaning the third window in the living room when male handler
(MH) came running in yelling, “She’s giving birth!”
The “she” is the goat
Chochi whom we welcomed to the farm in late September. Both Keika and I have
gotten acquainted with Chochi over the past three weeks, and as far as animals
go….she’s more than acceptable….except when the handlers seem to be giving her
more attention than she warrants. After all….she’s a goat! A goat can’t sit on
your lap, or hang out in the kitchen waiting for that moment that MH happens to
be cutting into some raw meat and feeling generous enough to share… And this
goat seems to like to eat the climbing rose at the entrance into the vegetable garden,
the creeping fig on the NW side of the barn and the bleeding heart in the
courtyard. I’m sorry…I digress on the eating habits of this new addition to the
family, appalled but delighted that my rodent supply will not be diminished by
Chochi.
Indeed, Chochi gave
birth today to two kids. The first to slip out was a healthy multicolored male.
A smaller, honey-colored female emerged about 10 or 15 minutes later. The
entire scene was quite fascinating…
The handlers kept an
eye out on Chochi for most of the rest of the day. The learning curve for human
moms is long. For animals, it seems to be much shorter. At one point, however, as
evening was approaching, Chochi seemed to take advantage of having two human
kidsitters, and roamed out of eyesight of her two new charges to feast on some fresh
tall grass and some willow leaves (the latter being a favorite food of hers). The
handlers exchanged worried glances with one another and wondered whether the
new mom would ever return to her babies. To their relief, she did return, and received the
youngsters under her belly to provide them with food as well as cover from the
cool of the night.
The handlers, quite
exhausted from the day’s events, returned to the house to find out that Bill’s
flight from Houston to Buenos
Aires was cancelled due to the Chilean volcano spewing ash across
both Argentina and Uruguay
