We had quite the day here on the farm.
A friend brought her two goat kids over for disbudding. Along for the ride were their mama goat (in the back seat), and her adult son, who has Down syndrome, rode shotgun. She had thoughtfully lined the back seat with a big towel to catch any stray poops. They’re Nigerian Dwarf goats, so they don’t take up much room. The towel would have been a great idea… if the next thing that happened hadn’t happened.
You know what they say about best laid plans.
She pulled into our parking area, turned off the car, got out, shut the door, and walked over to let us know she’d arrived. You see where this is going, right? You can probably already hear the ominous music playing in the background. She left the keys in the car. Her son, who is deathly afraid of dogs (and honestly not too keen on the goats in the back either), heard our dogs bark and did what made the most sense to him—he locked the doors. All of them.
She tried everything to get him to unlock them. Nope. Not happening. I think he was pretty sure that if he gave her an opening, she’d try to make him get out and enter the Land of Barking Dogs. He’s nonverbal, but he understands some sign. She signed for him to unlock his door. He pointed at her door like, “Nah, you go open yours.” She signed back that her door was broken and she needed him to open his. He stared her down, then turned his head like, “Nice try, Mom. Not falling for it.”
So we called the police. They don’t cover our town. Gave us the state police number. Called them—they don’t unlock vehicles anymore, but they’d happily send a wrecker if we wanted. I called my neighbor up the road who owns a tow truck—he’s in South Carolina visiting family. Of course he is.
This, friends, is why God invented AAA.
The first thing they did was thank me for my 21 years of membership. Very touching. But what I really wanted was someone to come unlock a goat-filled, poop-sprinkled vehicle. They agreed to send someone—about 45 minutes away. Not ideal, but at that point, we weren’t exactly in a position to be choosy.
So we waited.
She kept going back to try to coax her son into unlocking a door, any door. The goats started getting restless, stomping the towel all over the place, and—surprise!—goat berries began migrating into every crevice of that back seat. We ordered pizza and waited for the AAA guy while watching the steady progress of poop distribution.
When the AAA guy arrived, he looked confused. He saw someone in the passenger seat and assumed we’d gotten back into the car but had forgotten to cancel the call. She ran out to stop him from leaving and explained that no, the person in the car was not there voluntarily. Nor were the goats in the back seat.
He got to work and in less than 10 seconds, popped the back door open, and was face to face with three goats. I don’t know what exactly went through his mind, but I’m willing to bet he was questioning all his life choices that led him to unlocking a car full of goats, and maybe praying to never be dispatched to this zip code again.
And here’s the kicker: one of the back windows had been left cracked open about an inch. My husband had tried earlier to wedge a pole in through the gap to reach the front door lock—but couldn’t quite get to it. Turns out, the AAA guy just dropped his tool straight down and popped the back door lock in one try.
Hubby admitted he hadn’t even considered that. In his defense, maybe he couldn’t see past the goat heads pressed to the glass, nibbling on the pole like it was a buffet stick.
We tipped the AAA guy for braving freezing rain, my friend gave him a big hug, we finished our pizza, and eventually got down to the original task of disbudding the goat kids. She made it home safe, though the roads had definitely gotten worse while all the chaos played out.
The rest of the day was calm. Honestly, kind of boring by comparison.
But I’m willing to bet she’ll be discovering goat berries in that back seat well into the next season. And that next time she'll remember to take her keys.
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