Monday, April 8, 2019

Best Laid Plans!

Had quite the day here on the farm. A friend brought her 2 goat kids over for disbudding. She had her adult Downs son with her in the passenger seat, the 2 goat kids and their mama in the back seat which she had lined with a big towel to catch the poops. They are Nigerian Dwarf goats so they didn't take up much room, and the big towel idea would have worked if the next thing that happened didn't happen. You know what they say about best laid plans!

She parked in our parking area, turned the car off, got out of the car and closed the door, intending to go right back after she told us she was here. Are you starting to follow this and see where she went wrong? Can you guess what step she neglected in her best laid plans? Yeah, she left her keys in the car thinking she'd be right back to get them and the goat kids. Meanwhile, her son, who is deathly afraid of dogs (he wasn't too happy about the goats in the back seat either) heard our dogs bark and locked the doors. She tried everything to get him to unlock them. He wasn't having any of that. I'm sure he was thinking if he unlocked the doors she'd try to make him get out. He's nonverbal but does understand some sign. She signed for him to unlock his door and he pointed to her door as if to say, "No, you go open your door". Then she signed to him that her door was broken and needed him to open his door. Nope, he wasn't falling for that trick. He just turned his head and ignored her.

We called the police to see if they could send someone over with one of those tools. They don't cover my town but gave me the state police number. Called them and they don't do that anymore so would send a wrecker if we wanted. Called my neighbor up the road who has a towing company but he's in SC visiting family. This is why God invented AAA - the first thing they did was thank me for my 21 years of membership. While I appreciated their appreciation, I was more happy when they took my information and agreed to send someone to unlock the car. The company they were sending was about 45 min away, but I guess we couldn't be too picky.

So we waited. She went out every once in a while to try to get her son to respond to her desperate pleas to unlock the doors. The goats in the back seat were getting restless and scuffing up that towel so it no longer covered the seat. Meanwhile, we sent out for pizza and waited for the AAA guy, and watched the goat poops begin to get into places they weren't intended. When he arrived he was a little confused because he saw someone sitting in the front seat and thought we had resolved the problem without canceling our service request. She explained the situation so he wouldn't think he'd driven 45 minutes on icy roads for nothing. It took him less than 10 seconds to get a back door unlocked. When he opened that door he was face to face with 3 goats and looked even more confused. I can only imagine what was going through his mind at that moment, but it probably had something to do with unkind comments about backwoods rednecks!

And here's the real irony - She had left one of the back door windows open about an inch. My husband tried to stick a long pole in to reach the front door lock, but couldn't reach it. The reason it took AAA guy such a short time is that he put his tool in straight down to reach the lock on the back door! When it was pointed out that it could have been unlocked from there, hubby admitted he didn't see that one! In his defense, maybe he couldn't see past the goat heads that were trying to nibble on the pole. Guess that's why we have AAA.

We gave AAA guy a tip for getting here so quickly in a freezing rain storm, my friend gave him a big hug of gratitude, we finished our pizza and accomplished our original goal of disbudding the goats. My friend drove home, arriving safely even though the roads had gotten worse in the time she was here. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful and seemed almost blah by comparison. But I'll bet she'll be finding goat berries all over that back seat for months to come!

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1 comment:

Sally said...

Where are the pictures?? I demand pictures of this comedy of errors!!