Went to bed last night watching the fluffy snow falling through the lights outside the window. We were only supposed to get a dusting to an inch, but when we got up this morning it was at least 3 inches. Fluffy and light is good, and I love having new, clean snow so that I can feed hay out onto clean spots, keeping the groups out of the same-old, same-old spots around the feeder.
The White-Legged Culprit
My big heart-stopping moment this morning, however, was in the dark, of course… I was opening the gate to let the first goat back into the pen and make room for SnowPea to come out and get onto the milk stand. Their greenhouse shelter is on a little rise about 20 feet into the paddock. I pointed my headlamp up into the shelter just for a quick check to see if everyone was getting up, stretching, and doing all the usual things healthy animals do as they wake up. And what did I see as I looked (with a headlamp that needs new batteries, I suspect), were 4 little white legs standing in the darkness. As SnowPea was jumping onto the stand, I made a bee line into that greenhouse, to find that the 4 legs belonged to our black goat, Melanzane! I couldn’t see the rest of her body at all in the blackness of the shelter. Wow. All the thoughts that ran through my head in that moment were things like, who could have gotten bred that early? Oh no, it must have been one of the ram lambs that went to the butcher and now we have a wee lambie with no mother beside it claiming it as her own. Sheesh. If I wasn’t awake before then, I certainly was after that. SnowPea took it all in stride, waiting patiently for me on the milk stand to get over my early morning insanity.
I am thinking that we probably need to get a light hooked up in there soon!
Those early morning panic wakeups are the worst! Enjoy your snow.
They sure are! Gets the adrenaline going at any rate!