Doctor Doolittle Does it Again

Hick went to an auction last night to get rid of some goats. We were up to 13 of those rectangular-pupiled eating machines. The thing about goats is...they reproduce. Oh, those kids are so very cute when they're little, but they grow up to be voracious locusts who eat everything in sight. Kind of like teenage boys. Hick kept Nellie and Goatrude, our first two females, and their current babies. Plus another one that was too smart to get caught. So we still have at least a half dozen of the critters.

I was not sorry to see them go. We were not really attached to the new crop. The most horrible thing about the whole auction scene is that Hick came home telling tales of what he could have had. "Do you know I could have got a jackass for five dollars?" No comment there. It would have gone over his head. "And I could have got two of the cutest little ponies for only twenty dollars! A pretty little Holstein calf was a hundred dollars! And they had a pot-bellied pig from the St. Louis Zoo children's petting zoo! Chickens were seven to nine dollars each! And the guineas were going for TWENTY-TWO DOLLARS APIECE!"

You can imagine how his excitement sent a shiver of fear through me. We don't need any more animals. I mentioned that people can't afford to feed their pets. That's why things were so cheap. As far as those guineas go, I'm sure people think they are pretty and would look nice roaming around the yard. But they are hateful, hateful birds. The bullies of the fowl world. We had two, and another appeared out of nowhere, and they bite the chickens on the butt just for spite, and have the most annoying scream ever. We hate the guineas. I wish Hick would take them to the auction and get rid of them.

This morning while I was puttering around the kitchen I heard Hick step out onto the front porch in his underwear. He started gobbling. You know turkey season opens Monday, right? I'm sure that's a fact of which you're all aware, even though you may live in the city, or another state entirely. Hick has never been a turkey hunter. I went to look out the living room window. In the trailer attached to his truck was a big white turkey. Here we go again.

Our neighbor is a turkey hunter. We have given him permission to hunt on our land. I told Hick he needs to get over there tonight and let him know that we have a turkey. Otherwise he might go crazy calling it and waiting for it to walk down to the creek where he can shoot it. At least he knows that a white turkey is not what he's hunting for. Still. To get his hopes up hearing it respond to his call would just be cruel.

After all, that's the neighbor who saved me when I locked myself out of the house a couple weeks ago.