From their first arrival in March, two weeks before our daughter's wedding, our first venture into livestock husbandry was fraught with unknown consequences. Four boar nanny goats were purchased in an effort to keep down rampant grass growth and hopefully to help control the odd thistle and briar attack.
We'd prepared well. New feral proof fencing now surrounded the paddocks and posed a barrier not only to the wallabies that were trying to get in but also to livestock that might want to get out. What better home for a few impressionable young ladies? Initial reactions were mixed. The goats were unsure and skittish, disappearing to the far corner of the paddock to take solace beneath the prickly box and refused to be tempted by offerings of tid bits but aside from all this, they seemed intrigued and stimulated by their new environment.
With ear tags representing a mathematical progression almost worthy of a Dan Brown novel, the goat girls were identified as 2, 4, 6 & 8. Such impersonal reference was offensive to our daughter who believed that, as her parents had entered a new phase of their life (one in which our children had been substituted for goats), they should embrace it wholeheartedly and give the surrogoats (sic) names. So 2, 4, 6 & 8 became Molly, Toffee, Sugar and Polly aka, the goat girls.
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