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Thursday, February 9, 2012

My very first goat

It's not uncommon for you to have to wait for housing to become available when you move to a new military base.  That was the case when we got to Rota.  We lived in a house outside of base while we waited for housing on base to become available.  This is one story of what happened one day while staying at that house.

A dirt road was adjacent to our house.  Everyday in the morning a farmer would take his animals to market and the same farmer would return home in the afternoon on that dirt road.  My younger brother, Bryan, and I would say and wave "hello" to him everyday.  We liked to look at the cows, donkeys and goats.  It was like a mobile petting zoo as far as my brother and I were concerned.

About a month passed by, and on this particular afternoon the farmer approached Bryan and myself with a young goat in his arms.  He spoke to us, we didn't speak Spanish at the time, and he handed me the young goat.  Cool, I've never had a goat before.  We had a dog, but no goats.  We both shouted "gracias" and excitedly ran into the house to show mom our new pet.  She did not share our excitement.  She asked "where did you get that" in quite a loud voice as I remember it.  I explained it was our new goat, like this kind of thing happens everyday.  She hurried down the dirt road to catch up to the kind farmer.  She explained why we could not own a goat.  I am afraid to say we had to return the goat to the nice farmer.

Later my mom explained that the farmer gave the goat to my brother and myself because we always greeted him on his way to and from work.  He was just rewarding our kindness.

Bye until next time. 




1 comment:

  1. I love how you wrote "mobile petting zoo." You could also say it was an "edible" petting zoo, since most of those animals, I would assume, would eventually become meals! When I saw your title, I thought you would be writing about when you first ate goat! We ate goat in the Azores. Very tasty.

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