Tales of the Animals on a Borrowed Farm: Brownie

Here is the next part of the Tales of the Animals on a Borrowed Farm. I felt that I must post this soon, for I have so many new things to write about; I am afraid that if I do not get them written down, they will escape my memory like a bunch of jailbreakers!

Enjoy!

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Brownie

Brownie was a Nubian goat. Goats of her breed did not grow big horns, and were, therefore, very gentle. When Bear bought Brownie, she was just a kid. She lost her mother, so she had to be fed milk from a bottle. Brownie loved Bear’s children very much, and to them, she was almost like another sibling. She grew up to be a strong and healthy goat, and she was very fond of running around in the fields.

When she first came to the farm, it was almost as if Billy took her under his wing. The two became close friends quickly and I can still see them, running about behind the children. Billy and Brownie were often found doing naughty things. I believe that it was Brownie who gave Billy the idea to crawl under the fence and go into the next piece of land to graze.

To tell the truth, Brownie was a naughty goat, and on more than one occasion, Bear had to give her a little spanking. Oh, and how the children cried when Bear spanked Brownie. He was not cruel at all, but it broke the children’s hearts to see Brownie in trouble. Soon, the children made it their mission to do all they could to keep Brownie and Billy out of any kind of mischief.

Brownie was one of the special animals on the farm, and she stayed on right until the last, alongside Billy. When the time came to part, Bear decided to present Brownie to a little girl, who lived close to the farm, and who had come to love the animals just as much as Bear and his family had.

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Brownie's story reminds me of the twin yearling does we had last summer. They were also Nubian goats, and they were brown too. These two got into so much mischief that we were eventually forced to sell them to retain our peace of mind.

The doe on the left was named Pretty Heart, owing to the shapely white heart on her forehead, and her sister, on the right, was called Giselle. They were very graceful animals, and very beautiful too. I loved the mellow brown eyes that gazed warmly into my own, and the soft, silky fur beneath my fingers.

But, they were naughty. There was no enclosure from which they could not escape, no pasture in which they were content, no pen or paddock in where they would stay. No! They were free spirits. They wanted to roam the barn, investigate all the barrels and grain sacks, knock stuff off the shelves, sneak into the grain bin, and graze everywhere on the farm except in the grazing pastures.

We spent the summer running around after them, shooing them out of Mother's vegetable patch and flower garden, making sure they weren't run down by passing vehicles, and more or less trying to keep them alive, unhurt, and out of trouble.

Despite all our efforts, Fate had it that Giselle would injure herself. Luckily, it was something that didn't kill her. She had been in her feeder (as usual) when she was suddenly startled by a loud crash. She jumped out, but she moved so quickly that one of her forelegs got stuck in the wooden structure of the feeder. Frightened, she panicked and jerked on the leg, snapping it into two. We heard her agonized scream and came running to see what happened; we found her standing there with her leg stuck, half in her feeder and half out, pale and about to faint.

We extricated her from her uncomfortable position, but this was the first time any animal on our farm needed medical aid, so we were a bit flustered and confused as to what steps we should take next. My brave brother felt her leg gingerly, and finding that the skin had not been broken (lucky for us!), decided that the best thing to do would be to pop the bone back in place and then bind it tightly with a cloth to form a sort of cast.

Giselle was very docile as we led her to the house and gathered the materials for her cast. She calmly chewed on my brother's cap and tried to nibble his ear, and she cried only once when the bone was set. After her leg was bound, we took her back to the barn and sent her to rest.

Giselle wore the cast for a month; when we took it off, her leg was healed but slightly crooked. She was a very happy goat that day and ran around the barn with her sister, and I must admit, she looked adorable with that crooked foreleg. Even then, her sheer happiness made one forget that her leg wasn't exactly straight.

The sisters each gave birth to a tiny baby goat later in the year. Giselle's was a girl, who we named Moana, and Pretty Heart's was a boy, who we named Mawi (we had just finished seeing the cartoon Moana and since both goats were brown, we couldn't resist naming them so).

Moana's story was a sad one, for she lived only a week. She was the sweetest little doeling ever, and when she died, we were very heart-broken. Her funeral was a very tender, heart-rending affair, and after that, we buried her in a far corner in one of the fields where she would not be disturbed and planted a baby pine tree over it to mark it forever in the years to come.

 This is our pretty little Moana. Do you see the line of brown fur on her head? It looked exactly like something Native Indian princesses would wear, so we really could not name her anything other than Moana.

Mawi's life turned out to be very different, not only from Moana's but from the lives of other little goats too. His story shall be recounted in another post which will be dedicated only to him and his interesting experiences. Until next time!

Your good friend,

Ellen Hamilton 💖