There's Nothing Better

by Rachel and Tessa

You thought I was joking when I said we were communing with bowlegged goats in the Vermont Hills. Well I wasn't.

<--- Thesis: Goats have great personalities!

There is a great big orchard near the predicate ranch in Perkinsville, VT called Wellwood Orchards. They own all the land in sight and grow apples in the fall and berries in the summer that you can pick yerself. Check out the lovely berry specimens at right, hand-picked by yours trulies (and mom!).



After you're done picking your berries at Wellwood, you can enter the Best Petting Zoo In The World. And trust me, I've been to a lot of petting zoos.

This one costs 50 cents, which is actually top cents for a petting zoo when you could go for free at your local zoo. We hear ya. But those 50 cents go toward the nurturing of one idyllic, beautiful, healthy-looking group of animals for you to cuddle for as long as you want, and some really skittish bunnies which will not let you pet them under Any Circum-
stances.

In addition to goats and bunnies, there are also calves at this petting zoo whose eyes are bigger than all four of their stomachs! They will MELT you.


And inside this Petting Zoo is a Bunny Town where you can watch the bunnies going about their daily activities, like Sheriff Goodbunny here, asleep on the job.

There are also about 1 million roosters, some of whom have 8 toes on each foot, and some VERY exotic chickens and other birds. Every 3 minutes, all the roosters get very much frantic about something, all at the same time, and start roostering and crowing and chasing each other around in circles. This is intimidating. But it keeps you on your toes as you pet.

HOWever, the two young alpine goats are the highlight of this petting zoo. They are incredibly inquisitive and very physical. They put their snouts in your face, try to untie your shoes (and succeed) and then they lick your legs and try to eat your shorts. They sniff your camera and rub their noses on your pants. They work very well as a team, one distracting your face while the other focuses on your shoelace, remaining somehow simultaneously totally annoying and extremely loveable. They nuzzled Rachel so hard that this happened:

And they do all of this with the straightest and frankest of Y-shaped goat faces,

like it is their job and not their hobby.

And it wasn't only Sheriff Goodbunny and the goats who took their duties seriously. Ms. Chicken took calf-guarding, which we all know is the mandated duty of any adult chicken (!?), very seriously . She was incredibly possessive. When we tried to pet them calves, she pecked at our arms!

And here she is all up in our grill, giving us the stink eye:

Lucky for us, she soon lost interest and strutted off, giving us a chance to scratch the calves' fuzzy cowlicked heads and make several minutes of sustained eye contact with their big brown eyes.

But the overarching philosophical point here is this: goats are great people. We like them even more now than when we met this little dude at the Ingham County Fair petting zoo in 2004. He was very small and very wobbly and served as the true inspiration for this drawing.

Goats have chutzpah! They are full-contact animals who don't take no for an answer. They have no respect or regard for personal space, personal property, or fences for that matter. And we like that in an animal. They are true intellectuals, curious about everything that enters their visual field, and they indiscriminately get their snouts into EVERYTHING. The contradiction between their appearance and their egos is ridiculous: they're gawky and awkward, knobby kneed and bony with silly floppy ears (and bowed legs, if you're lucky) but nonetheless pushy, stubborn, strong-willed, and kind of pleasantly full of themselves.

Goats for president!