It Takes a Village...to Catch a Goat

Today was Market Day.

Market days start early around here. Really early. By 4:30 a.m. I've usually slugged down enough caffeine to become functional and I'm trying to finish all the little jobs I should have finished the day before. Labels to print, produce to pack, flowers to arrange, coolers to pack—it's controlled chaos, and somehow it usually all comes together. Today was one of those rare mornings when everything was actually going according to plan.

Then Brad came down from feeding the goats.

"Something's wrong with Frisco."

He wasn't eating. He wouldn't come into the barn. He kept stretching like he was trying to pee, but nothing was happening. If you've never owned a male goat, that sentence probably doesn't mean much. If you have, your stomach just dropped. Urinary blockages in male goats are life-threatening emergencies.

So, on the way to the market, I called the weekend emergency vet.

"Bring him in," they said. "It shouldn't be more than five hundred dollars."

Okaaay...

We got the market set up, Brad stayed to take care of customers, and I headed home to load Frisco.

The good news? I caught him almost immediately.

The bad news? Just as I was getting him into the crate, his breakaway collar did exactly what it was designed to do.

It broke away.

Now Bucky Boy—who was awfully strong and ornery for a sick goat—was loose in the backyard.

Which just happens to be next to the garden.

Not ideal.

I opened the gate to the barnyard, silently begging the other seven goats to stay exactly where they were while I chased Frisco back inside.

Apparently, watching me chase one stubborn goat around the chicken run was wildly entertaining because every one of them stood perfectly still, completely transfixed by the show.

Miraculously, I got Frisco back into the barnyard.

Unfortunately, that was only halftime.

After another twenty minutes of chasing him around the goat climber, between the trees, and generally being outsmarted by a goat, I finally admitted defeat.

I trudged over to the neighbors' house.

Yes... trudged.

Steve, his wife, and their daughter were outside cleaning one of the cars. Without hesitation, they dropped what they were doing and followed me back to the pasture to help catch one incredibly stubborn goat.

Spoiler alert...

We never caught him.

After another ten minutes of running circles around all four of us, Frisco suddenly stopped, stretched...

...and took the biggest whiz you've ever seen.

Problem solved.

As it turns out, I probably owe him an apology. If he'd politely climbed into the crate like a civilized goat, I'd have spent five hundred dollars at the emergency vet for absolutely nothing.

I didn't apologize to the goat.

I did, however, thank my neighbors several times for dropping everything to help me chase him around the pasture.

Sometimes community doesn't look like a big event or an organized gathering.

Sometimes it looks like the neighbors leaving a half-cleaned car to help you chase a stubborn goat on a busy Saturday morning.

And that's exactly the kind of community we're grateful to call home.