Yesterday lunchtime, I was taking some pictures of the old-witch tree at the top of our drive. I like the two figures on her right-hand arm, one of them looks like a high-heeled shoe, and I’m wondering whether I ought to do something with it or if it wouldn’t be best to just leave it alone…Anyway, I turned around because there was a young couple oohing and aahing about the goats, who were just behind me
This kind of thing happens all day long at the weekend. They enjoy the attention
and Vesla in particular has no qualms about asking people for spare change.
Sometimes she follows them as far as the next bend, and you see them start to worry she’s not going to turn back.
You can see that Misty’s got a thing round her neck. It’s an inverted dog collar that we got from the vet and it prevents her turning her head to lick a wound – a bite she got on the bottom, probably from a dog.
She seems to rather like her collar.
She was very appreciative of the medical help she got as well as enjoying the extra feed she was offered as an inducement to put it on.
Now I think she kind of associates it with the food.
A Bad Guide 
Goaty delight. Thank you.
Oh, God! Dear Misty, you look fantastic with this outfit!
I can’t decide if it looks like a corset of Versaille’s Court or like a collar of a Puritan priest…
It does look like a Puritan’s collar, though none of the goats is much like a Puritan.
They’re glad you still like them, dearie.
Quick! Makes sure to register GoatsWithPipeCollars.com
Or just put it on Tumblr …
Yes, hurry up!
Is Misty better from her “war wound”?
I don’t know much about Tumblr. Is it a blogging site? Misty is much better, thanks to antibiotics.
We have a pine tree–alive, not dead–with a squirrel very much like your high-heeled shoe.
Occasionally i think of getting up there on a ladder and doing something to make it look even more like a squirrel, but it seems like gilding the lily, or cheating, or something.
It also seems like a hell of a lot of work. Do you ask every visitor if they think it looks like a squirrel? That may be the answer.
So which dog is guilty of the nip?
And do the adorable, wonderful goats go up to people like dogs? To be petted?
I really want a goat.
>A. J. P. Crown
Off-board.-
http://www.pilegrim.info/en/artikkel.aspx?id=714273
http://www.diariodeleon.es/noticias/cultura/un-arquitecto-leones-para-una-princesa-noruega_632991.html
Very interesting, Jesús. I didn’t know about her. Rather a nice statue too.
mab, it wasn’t either of our dogs. In fact Alex, the Yorkshire terrier, would need a step ladder to reach Misty’s hind quarters. I think it was one of the tourists’ dogs. The goats, especially Vesla, love to say hello to visitors. It can be a bit risky with Holly because she might just butt you. She’s very emotional.
Anyone can have a goat or two, though I’m not sure they’re house-trainable – I’m not sure they aren’t; but ours aren’t house-trained, so they only come in here for short periods and it’s always a bit risky. Otherwise, I would love to have them living over here instead of in the goat-house.
So when you say “love to say hello to visitors” does that mean that they wander up, nudge (butt), want to be petted? Where do you pet a goat? Do they like a rub behind the ears?
I’ll have to talk with Riley (dog) about goats. She might not be keen on it.
Yes, that’s exactly what they do. They wouldn’t butt first, Holly just likes to butt the odd three-year-old who is tentatively petting a goat for the first time. It’s only happened once, actually. I pat them all over, they like being scratched in different places. Holly likes to stand still for half an hour while all the strands of hay and straw are removed from the wool on her head, whereas Misty isn’t crazy about having her head touched at all. Vesla has the softest wool, followed by Holly. Misty’s is matted, it must be a bit greasy.
Riley and goats would probably be ok with each other, a stand-off rather than huge pals. Most of the time, goats will psyche out dogs. When one makes a sudden charge towards them expecting the goats to run away, they don’t move. The dogs find that disconcerting. If Riley is as small as Alex the Yorkshire terrier she may stay out of their way, just in case, but the goats would never hurt her.
I know nothing of male goats, we only have females.
Cool. I laughed at the thought of a three-year-old flying through the field, lifted by goat power.
Riley is basically a hunting dog, so she might try to stalk one. But she’s not very brave. She has been known to put her tail between her legs and bark hysterically at plastic lawn gnomes. Very embarrassing.
Getting back to the original post, the conjunction of “old witch” and “high-heeled shoe” brings Witch Hazel to mind.
That’s funny, I hadn’t heard of a cartoon character called Witch Hazel. We are surrounded by hazel bushes here, though. Sometimes at night I see them changing position.
Interesting. What species is the dead tree in the photograph, and does it at least stay put?
By the way, a little wiki research informs me that
– the witch-hazel plant is not a hazel at all
– the “witch” in its name means “pliant” and is related to “wicker” and “weak”
– there are some pretty interesting myths about hazelnuts, including something about the spots on the salmon.
I can never harvest the hazelnuts, the squirrels always get there first. Whenever I see one that they’ve left, it’s always empty. I’ll have to google hazelnuts.
It’s a birch tree that broke in half when they chopped down all the spruce trees that surrounded it and acted as wind breaks. Our neighbor is perpetually worried that the remaining trees are going to fall on his house. He’s very efficient; his snow-blower always works first time. I think he’d just as soon get rid of the trees, just in case.
Of course, the squirrels may be putting away some of these nuts for later. Do you know where? The hell of it is that the squirrels may not. Wiki says of the red squirrel:
Excess food is put into caches, either buried or in nooks or holes in trees, and eaten when food is scarce. Although the red squirrel remembers where it created caches at a better-than-chance level, its spatial memory is substantially less accurate and durable than that of grey squirrel; it therefore will often have to search for them when in need, and many caches are never found again.
You could go digging around, but it seems a little undignified.
My sister and her husband live in a part of North Carolina that was hit hard by hurricane Irene. It seems that over the years many of their neighbors have had trees cut down. Whether this was more about fear of falling trees or a desire for sunlight or what, I don’t know. My sister and her husband left theirs standing, though. They like trees. (They are both biologists.)
The hurricane knocked down lots of trees or big parts of trees in the neighborhood, and a great many houses were damaged. I think my sister worried that her trees would hit somebody’s house, but in fact they stood firm, probably because they were all crowded together and could block the wind. Safety in numbers, I guess.
Heh!
Who needs a collie when you can hire a jazz band?
Fantastic. I’d like to try that, see if they prefer any particular kinds of music. Unfortunately I don’t have a jazz band, and our cows have gone in for the winter already so I must try and remember to try it with an electronic device next spring.
There’s a man with a long horn here who claims he can summon the cows with it. It’s a rather mournful noise. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years.
I’m betting that it was the euphonium, or whatever that big horn is, that really got the herd’s attention.
I thought so too. It was the first instrument playing, and I didn’t feel the clarinet or the trumpet made any more of an impression on them. I thought it was a tuba, but I wouldn’t recognise a euphonium. I’ll have to look up solo works for those instruments. Maybe they’d like the double bass, but I suspect they’ll prefer wind to strings.
[…] this kind of thing – so maybe someone ought to be making houses for the squirrels too? Empty says that red squirrels can’t remember where they’ve left their hoards of nuts, so […]