by Kathy Brasby | Aug 8, 2014 | Seasons
“Harvey always walked around with his head bend down,” the physical therapist told me over coffee and scones. “He had a walker and he’d walk hunched over. We worked on that for weeks but I never could get him to lift his head.”
“Frustrating for you?” I asked.
She chuckled. “More for him, but he never knew.”
“So did you change his therapy schedule?”
“Well, yes.” She sipped her coffee. “One day Harvey was walking down the hallway, like he always did, with his eyes on the floor and his head hunched over. We had a new resident on the floor that liked to escape her room early.”
“Escape her room?”
The therapist nodded. “She liked to sneak out of her room topless.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, Harvey was making his way down the hallway when this lady did her thing. She walked right by Harvey without a stitch on top.”
“And Harvey—“
“Oh, Harvey just kept shuffling along.”
“He was shocked?”
The therapist took a bite of her scone. “He had his head down and he never saw a thing. Missed the whole show.”
“Did you ever tell him?”
“Nope. I decided he could keep shuffling along. We’d work on something else.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Aug 5, 2014 | Stories
Last week I wrote about Goats in Love but it was only part one. Story number two may top it.
Rocket, our daddy buck, spent a lot of time alone pining for his girlfriend. Now the girlfriend varied from week to week, but Rocket was always ready.
Rocket’s pad also paralleled a small pasture where two does lived. One day I noticed that one of the does, Lulu, was ready to meet Rocket. The other doe, Maybelle, was oblivious.
I did mention that Rocket was always ready, right?
I opened the gate and Rocket roared into the pasture, legs churning in a blur like Wiley Coyote chasing the roadrunner.
Rocket, as we already established, had more hormones than brains. Chanting “hey, good lookin’” as he flew past me, he focused his loving gaze on Maybelle. Not Lulu.
A female goat not in the mood has no interest in a hormone-fueled buck. Maybelle saw Rocket racing toward her and took off like a jet. Her legs were churning faster than his.
I watched the pair flying around the perimeter of the pasture, legs spinning. Rocket’s head was up as he enjoyed the beauty of his new girlfriend. Maybelle’s head was down; she had no time for anything but a panicked gallop.
Meanwhile, Miss Lulu was sending little air kisses and twirling her tail like a string of pearls.
As the racing pair headed down the backstretch, their path took them past Miss Lulu who by now was flashing her lashes like a neon sign.
I did not know a thundering buck could make a 180-degree correction without turning inside out but Rocket did it.
Suddenly, he was bringing roses and chocolate to Miss Lulu.
And Maybelle leaned against a fence post, heaving for air while her life passed before her eyes.
With goat romance, when it’s not your time, it’s not your time.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 29, 2014 | Stories
I’ve decided to declare this time as Valentine’s season for goats because, well, if you have to ask you may not understand.
Of late, I’ve been seeing these adorable YouTube videos of baby goats cavorting with great joy. If you’ve seen those, your appetite may be whetted toward goats. Well, you need to know more.
If you haven’t heard about goats in love, you are woefully deprived.
In our goat herd, we usually keep our buck – the future daddy – separated from the does so we can control when the babies come.
One bright fall morning, one of our girls had put on her high heels, lipstick, and Chanel before sashaying along the fence line she shared with Rocket the buck.
Rocket got the message: she was in the mood. Rocket was always in the mood so he pushed his manly head through the fence to sniff her fragrance.
When I saw the hearts drifting into the air above those two, I collected Miss Elinore and brought her into Rocket’s pen. She wiggled her hips and lightly danced from the gate to the fence line so that she could lean against Rocket.
Just what he had hoped for, except for one thing.
Rocket’s massive head, and I could not make this up, was stuck in the fence.
He pulled and twisted while Elinore was nearly doing a pole dance beside him. His front legs were like pile drivers pushing into the ground. His cheeks would have turned red from the exertion if not hidden by that thick buck fur. No go. He was stuck.
The love of his life was at hand and he couldn’t get his head out of the wire.
I gotta tell you that it’s hard to cut fence wire when you’re laughing that hard.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 25, 2014 | Seasons
Agnes leaned over the lunch table, her eyebrows bent together.
“My brother-in-law is living here but he won’t speak to me.”
I had joined her table at the nursing home and glanced over my shoulder. “Really? That’s too bad.”
She nodded. “I’ve spoken to him several times but he turns away. And do you know what else? He’s changed his name from Bob to James!”
I knew her brother-in-law lived 300 miles away and so I took a deep breath. “That’s frustrating for you, I’ll bet.”
“Well,” she settled back in her chair, “You just go on.” She studied me for a moment and then leaned forward again.
“And then there’s a woman who denies her own children.”
How did I answer this one? “Really? That’s awful.”
Agnes nodded. “I know. I asked her one day about her children and she claims she doesn’t have any children. She even told me she had never married. How could she forget her own husband?”
“I can see that upsets you.”
“I went up to June and asked her, ‘Do you know Melvin Roberts?’ and she said she’d never heard of him. He was her husband for 40 years. How about that?”
I knew June, too. She sat at another table in the dining room, waving at newcomers and chatting happily with others at her table. And I knew she’d never married and her last name wasn’t Roberts.
“Do you think you’ve confused June with someone else?” I asked.
“Oh,” Agnes studied my face. “I can see they’ve convinced you, too.”
Once I would have defended my position. Once I would have tried to change Agnes’ mind. But I knew she’d forget our conversation tomorrow no matter what I said. Kindness won out.
“Well, family is important to you, isn’t it?” I said.
Her face relaxed. “I’ll never forget my husband or children.”
She probably wouldn’t. But the brother-in-law was in trouble.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jul 22, 2014 | Stories
This is not another of those cute cat stories that make the Facebook rounds, largely because I think cats are as unfathomable as two-year-olds. Or teenagers.
Clara the cat joined our family as the responsibility of our teenage son. Somehow the connection seemed poetic.
We already had a cat. Snickers was the responsibility of our college-age daughter who is moving out soon.
Maybe a little cat overlap could work as long as I had no responsibilities.
These cats’ problem wasn’t sashaying over my desk, waving a tail before my nose, knocking my glasses across the room, tromping on my keyboard — but I digress. Their problem was each other.
Neither liked the other.
Their owners thought they’d get acquainted and then play together.
Ha.
Responsible teenage son decided to comb and clip the tangles from Clara’s long hair. So he held her in his lap while he worked.
Clara growled at Snickers as though Snickers controlled the comb wirelessly. Every time the tangles were pulled, she snarled a little louder. When one tangle needed extra work, she suddenly launched a full-scale mauling on Snickers, who hadn’t bothered to ignore the hair styling party.
Bet he regretted that.
The cats seemed to like yowling at each other more than parading over my computer cables, scattering papers and nestling into the paper-thin space between my printer. Digressing again…
One evening we heard this now-familiar guttural noise rising from near the dining room table. Clara and Snickers were flopped on the floor just out of batting distance from each other.
You could hear cat swear words in those growls but neither moved.
My son wandered onto the scene, watching the two combatants throw insults and threats without shifting their leisurely positions.
“Weird,” he said. “That is the laziest cat fight ever.”
Wow. Even more unfathomable than teenagers.
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