We have a tradition in our family to visit a pumpkin patch every year before Halloween. We go with the same friends and have the same great time. This year, when we thought about changing venues, all the kids protested—a few to the point of tears.
So we kept our plans and herded a total of ten children to
Vineyard, UT, where Pumpkin Land resides.
We started with the traditional corn maze, or rather corn trail, where
the older boys, of course, left everyone in the dust, determined that they knew
best. (It was actually the girls who
found the way this year.) Then we
proceeded to the farm animal enclosures.
Chickens, ducks, rabbits, turkeys, and sheep grazed on leftover harvest
veggies as dozens of kids (not all ours) poked and yelled among the pens and
play equipment.
And then a memory I hadn't thought of in years hit me square
in the face; and despite my accumulated years of adult experience, I jumped
like a little kid, and almost bolted.
There, with its stupid ugly shaggy head caught between iron bars was a
large billy goat. He bleated and pulled
and butted and caused enough racket that I thought he was going to tear down
the fence and start after me.
Irrationally, I scooped up Sam and led him away as quickly as I could.
As we left and headed toward the bounce houses (much
safer and less nasty—even with dozens of soggy-socked three-to-eleven-year-olds),
I realized that Zac was still standing by the other goat pen, feeding
them. The farmer had come, unstuck the
stubborn billy and brought a ginormous bag of popcorn to feed the smaller,
tamer goats, letting some of the children help.
And because I’m honestly not scared of goats, I felt really stupid for
my unexplainable behavior.
Well, maybe a quick back story is warranted since there is
an explanation that might clear my silliness.
When I was quite a bit younger (perhaps kindergarten or first grade), my
mom signed me and my brothers up for one of those book clubs where every month
we would get four books in the mail.
Very cool—especially for a geek like me who loved to read. However, amidst all the great and
not-so-great children’s literature that I was exposed to, there remains one
book that as I look back in retrospect, was the origin of all my fears.
I believe it was called The Little Goat by Judy Dunn.
(I have since found a picture of the cover.) Harmless enough, it was about a little girl
who helped raise a runty kid until it was big enough to take care of itself (if
I remember correctly). However, there
were a couple of pictures of the other goats on the farm that just gave me the willies:
first, a shaggy brown goat sticking its head out of a barn; and second, a black
and brown goat that looked like an ultra-hairy Donald Sutherland with bugging
eyes and a crazy, wild look as in his role as Sgt. Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes—craaaazzy man. In his words, it put off lots of negative
waves, baby, as it stared off the page into my soul. That demon goat scared the crap out of me.
When we lived in Arkansas, there was an old working mill
that we would go to every so often. And I
believe we had pictures there once, so I actually thought it was Olin Mills—you
know: the portrait studio. And it could
have been for all I knew back then. I
remember a path along the stream with wooden planks and handrails like something
Huck, Tom, and Joe might have lashed together: so rickety you felt safer not
holding onto them. And there was a
covered bridge with rails where we would drop sticks into the lazily creeping
stream. Bracken and other mosses covered
just about everything with a perpetual green.
Even the water had a greenish tint to it.
I believe I was in second or third grade when I had a
nightmare of being stuck on a dilapidated wooden bridge, the very one from the
mill. One end collapsed; the other
dropped off into the greenish swirling pond, trapping me in semi-darkness. I
raced over to one side, but waiting for me was one of the demon goats from the
book only about the size of a tree.
Panicked, I rushed to the opposite side.
The other goat waited, smiling.
Their necks started stretching until they looked like giant deformed
llamas. Their goofy, lopsided heads
began swaying back and forth, serpentining like cartoon cobras moving in for
the kill. I couldn’t escape and I woke
up screaming and tangled in my covers. Looking
over the railing of my top bunk, The
Little Goat lay open to the page with the demon goats. It was several months before I could even look
at the book again. The pictures haunted
me for years. And although I am not
afraid of goats in real life, every so often when I think about that dream, I involuntarily
shudder.
 |
| This is the cover of the book. Not scary. I can't find a picture of the demons, but they're in there! I went to my parents' house to find the book, but it has disappeared. I wonder if I might have destroyed it several years ago. It wouldn't put it past me. |
I've had several experiences with goats since that moment that have caused me slight discomfort. One was a goat eating my friend’s worksheet out of his hand on a field trip to a zoo during 6th grade. My mom, who was chaperoning the trip, had to vouch for him because the teacher didn't believe that the goat ate his homework. Another instance happened across the Atlantic in Spain. I was walking down a dirt trail along a steep hillside with a companion, only to realize that we were in the direct path of a flock of several hundred goats. With no way to go around, we had to freeze as the animals poured around us, some of them nipping at our belts and fingers and packs as they ebbed and flowed down the path, a fuzzy brown and white stream replete with sprouting horns and full udders dragging on the ground—the lone shepherd laughing at us all the way. But nothing compares to the trauma inflicted by The Little Goat and his pals.
Stupid bleaters!
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