Chapter 7 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)

More of Mom’s Venture:

While Mom had the rabbits and goats, I don’t remember ever getting too attached to either. They were kept outdoors: rabbits in raised cages with nesting boxes, and the goats were in the garage which was converted into a barn for the duration of her raising goats for milk. My brother Jerry was allergic to Cow’s milk, so it was more economical for her to raise our own milk than to have to make the purchase of goat’s milk just for him. We didn’t notice the difference in taste until Mom gave up the goats, when one injured her when she got caught in its chain, and it pulled her down the hill and into the garden. They had to be staked on a chain when they were out grazing, as goats eat everything and anything. So it meant having no garden or fruit trees if we let them run free. When we changed over to Cow’s milk, it wasn’t the goat’s milk that tasted different, but the cow’s milk when first introduced to that. When I was an adult, I tried goat’s milk once and couldn’t understand how I could ever have liked the taste. Guess it’s all in what one’s used to.

Back when Mom was milking goats, in order to have milk, the goats have to have a kid. Once in awhile there would be a male goat born, and those were sold. One time a buyer asked if she would like to have the unused parts sent back for the dogs, and I guess she said okay without thinking about it, and they sent back the ears with the other unused meat for “dog food.” After that, When she sold the male kids, she never had them even mention what they were going to do with them.

When my mother needed a goat bred, she’d take the doe over to Mr. Lord’s house. He had a good Billy goat stud. Once when she was taking the female goat there, walking it up Merrimac Street in the middle of the day, a friend asked her where she was going with the goat. She simply replied, “To the Lord’s house,” like you’d say, “To the Smith’s house… or the Jone’s house” without thinking about how it sounded. And the person looked at her like she was crazy, as the local church didn’t have a special blessing service for animals, and the Church was just up ahead. Mom couldn’t think why the person gave her such a look until she thought about it later and started laughing. I don’t know as she ever got back to that neighbor with an explanation.

It was quite an adventure when a nanny goat was having a baby. I still have a scene in my mind of my mother running around with a large towel held out trying to keep it under the kid being born, which was hanging from the mother goat's backside in its sack-like afterbirth while the nanny kept moving as if it was trying to get away from it.

We children were quite fond of every baby anything that we saw, including kid goats [the name of baby goats being the reason she didn’t like us calling young people “kids”] and the baby rabbits. Once a mother rabbit refused to nurse some of its babies, and my mother brought them in when our cat, June, just happened to have newborn kittens, was away from her nesting spot. While June was away, Mom kind of mixed them together to gain each others smell. It must have worked, as Junie accepted them, though the strange looking “kittens” got washed and washed for a long time before she stretched out and allowed these strange newborns to nurse along with their littermates. I can remember playing with both the baby rabbits and kittens.

The back entrance to the house had a heavy wooden bench on which Mom would milk the goats. In the corner was a big metal contraption which may have been just a filter or may have even been a pasteurizer. I could never get the hang of milking a goat, but don’t remember it being important that I learn. I think my mother liked working with animals. She would have probably made the better vet than I, as she had the patience to have learned that profession if she had it all to do over again, whereas when I heard how many more years of schooling it would take to be a vet, I decided that it wouldn‘t be worth it, as I so hated school.

I think Mom liked being outside, and was a nature lover, so she didn’t mind household chores like hanging out the clothes, though there was no such thing as an electric clothes dryer back then. The animals and those jobs that brought her outside or in touch with animals I think kept her sane, as she was no housekeeper, hated the term, “housewife”, and didn’t like having klatches with the other women in the neighborhood. I know the feeling of being outdoors, and doing something with animals, and how it puts one in an entirely different frame of mind than when doing the social, or the mundane indoor housework kinds of things.

We weren’t much for taking pictures. I think one of us must have gotten a camera for Christmas one year, but most of the family album pictures were taken by Aunt Daw, my mother's younger sister, with whom we were closest, who used to come visit for a weekend quite often throughout my life at home.

Here’s a picture someone took of the goats and Peter Bono, a neighbor and younger friend of mine and my brother Peter, who would come into the barn and visit the goats.