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Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Journey Continued!

I know you're all just anxious to hear about my continued journey, and I don't want to disappoint, so I thought I should keep going with my stories.  Last I left you (before I had to go eat some hay), we were visiting Isobelle and her friends.  Here is the entrance to their lovely farm.  There is a helpful "critter crossing" sign so that nobody would run me over.  Small goats can be dangerous on the road!  See the lovely stream?!
My lady had some special things to give to Isobelle's lady. First, she gave her some things called "house plants."  I really don't understand the need for plants in her house.  If she wants to eat something, she should go outside and nibble on some twigs and leaves and grass.  Who needs plants in the house when you can go outside to eat?  Anyway, my lady and Isobelle's lady spent a long time looking at my lady's plants.  I think my lady was telling her their names.
Or perhaps she was telling her which ones were tastiest?  They sure looked happy about it though!  
My lady wasn't allowed to take plants over the border to Can of Duck Canada.  It doesn't seem to matter that there are plants that grow ON the border and they all share the same dirt.  I mean really, those customs officers must be a bit soft in the head.  Maybe they've been butted a few too many times?

Speaking of being butted, my lady just went right on into the pasture with Isobelle and her goat friends without worrying about Durin and Dayel.  They are two boy goats who are a little bit feisty sometimes, and they like to butt.  If you look at Isobelle's blog here, you will see a picture of Dayel trying to butt me through the fence! It was better for me to stay on the other side of the fence.  My lady went and fed everybody peppermints, and so did Isobelle's lady.  They are very brave, but the goats didn't butt them.  Maybe it was because of the peppermints?

Isobelle lives in a place with some sort of scary looking trees.  I think I might be a bit worried there at night, in case the kerfoozleumps come out of the trees.  Isobelle told me that kerfoozleumps are sometimes seen in her state of New York.
 My lady also gave a lot of chickens to Isobelle's lady.  I don't know how she managed it, but Isobelle's lady gave all of them names!  She is very creative that way.  She also has a lot more eggs now than she used to!  I think she will be having a lot of omelets!  You can see the chickens on Isobelle's blog too, but I'd rather you didn't because there is a picture of my bum in a diaper on there too, and that's rude.

My lady also went to visit with all of the dogs at Isobelle's farm, and she loves all the dogs, but I think she has a special friend in Kezia.  Here is my lady snuggling with Kezia, which made me kind of jealous, but then I found out that poor little Kezia has a hip problem, and she is going to need a big scary surgery.  It will be sort of like my spaying surgery, but different, and a LOT more expensive.  Stay tuned for future blog posts about Kezia and her surgery.  My lady will be auctioning off some of her handspun yarn to help raise some pennies for Kezia's surgery!  It's going to be exciting!
So we had to keep going, even though we would have liked to stay with Isobelle for a longer time.  Our next state is very difficult to say.  You have to listen carefully when I tell you.  It's Mass of Chew Sits.  Now you might say to yourself, what on earth does that mean?  I, being a goat of great and broad knowledge, can tell you that.  It means that this state was founded by large groups of ruminants (sheep and goats mostly) and there were so many, it was a "mass" of them.  Back in the day when we didn't have big words like ruminants, because the humans didn't know about all our digestive parts, they described all ruminants as "chew sits" because that is what we do.  A lot.  We chew.  Then we sit (or lie) down.  Chew.  Sit.  Chew.  Sit.  Get it?  So it was "Mass of Chew Sits" because of all the chewing and sitting goats and sheep.  I was honoured to visit such a great state.
While we were there, we had to visit the rest stop, of course, to see what was on offer for the Chew Sits.  Here I am checking out the grass (which was a bit short, mind you, perhaps due to other chewers?)
But then, I discovered a new treat!  Pine cones!  I ate several of them.  I did not have those on my previous farm and so these were a very exciting new adventure for me.  Crunchy, good flavour, and nice texture.  All in all, a great chew experience.
After all that chewing, I was a little thirsty, so we had to get some water.  I am pretty good at determining which bottles are full of water, and I make my needs clearly known to my lady, so she has no question in her mind about my level of thirst.  I prefer Fiji mineral water.  It's good for my horns.  Oh, by the way, in this picture, you can see that I am *just* starting to get my beard!  I am such a grown up goat now!
After Mass of Chew Sits, we had only 2 states left!  Our next state was just a very short drive through, because we only had to go through a small corner of it.  The state is called New Hamster.
I'm not sure why this is the name.  I didn't see any hamsters at all.  Here is a hamster from Wikipedia.
I think it is also a sort of Chew-Sit animal.  Perhaps the ruminants went to Mass of Chew Sits and the hamsters didn't have enough food there so they went to New Hamster.

Our last state before Can of Duck was Maine!  Here is the bridge to Maine.  I'll have to wait and tell you about Maine in my next episode, because I've got to go chew and sit now.
Goatie kisses from Lucky Nickel to all my fans!!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Moments with Number

As Lucky Nickel has told you already, we went to visit Isobelle and her friends on the long journey from Iowa to Canada.  Isobelle lives with other goats and some mini horses, and also a wonderful retired racehorse named Number.
I am particularly fond of Number.
He's very gentle, and I feel drawn to him somehow. Maybe it's because, when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I went to summer horse-riding camp, so he reminds me of my childhood.
Maybe it's because he's a retired racer, just like my greyhound, and I know how much he appreciates the wonderful home he has with Bev and her other four-legged friends.
Or maybe, it's because he brought me some very precious moments of peace and tranquility on a long and stressful journey, which was a rare and special gift.
Thank you Number, for your calming presence and your lovely soft nose.  Sending you long distance love!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

More Cross-Country Adventures with Lucky Nickel

Well, it's been a goat's age since I was able to post anything.  My lady has been so busy with this moving business, it's really quite complicated.  I'm glad I didn't have to plan it.  Over 5 days, we traveled through 9 states and 2 Canadian provinces!  I am an extremely well traveled goat - probably one of the most experienced in this area, anyway.

We started out in Iowa, of course.  It was the only state I had ever known, because it's where I was born.  This was our last Iowa sunset.  It made my lady cry.
I really wasn't to sure about this whole driving thing.  I mean, I like being in the car - in fact, I like jumping on top of the car when my lady leaves the sun roof open, and then I get inside and practice driving and popping my head out the window to stick my tongue out at bad drivers.  This time, I had to be in a crate!  I usually get to run around inside the back of the car, but my lady said it was for my own safety.  This meant I could not lay my head on my lady's shoulder while she is driving, which I really like to do.
This is me in my crate.  It makes it very difficult for me to keep proper control of things going on around me.  How am I supposed to supervise from here?!
Here was the truck we took, with all the things in it that my lady owns.  Actually, she got rid of a lot of stuff before we left, but you would never know it.  We even needed an extra trailer!
My lady says goodbye to Iowa.  You can't tell but she had been crying because she was sad to be leaving so many friends and good times behind, and she loved her farm, but she has new adventures to go to.  Saying goodbye is always difficult for humans.  I was just excited about it.  Goats don't cry.
It wasn't just me in the car!  We took 10 chickens with us to our friends Bev and her goat Isobelle.  My lady determined that taking the chickens over the border was very complicated because of something called a "core of teens" and my lady doesn't really like teenagers very much.  She said the chickens would have had to be with the "core of teens" for 30 days, in a small room, so that they didn't give diseases to anybody.  I don't know what the teenagers have to do to stop chickens from giving diseases.  These government regulations are very strange.  I really don't understand this business at all, but my lady said it was a "pain in the bum" except she didn't say bum, because she was mad about it.  So, we had 10 chickens with us and they laid eggs on the way to New York.
Our first state after Iowa was Ill-a-noy.  Don't worry, we didn't get ill there. Chick-ago is a big city there, which my lady has visited before, but we didn't go there.  We just kept driving.  It was night time, so we didn't see much there.  We stayed overnight in Ill-a-noy just after we passed Chick-ago because we only left Iowa at around 3:30 pm.  My lady took me for night-time walks around the hotel that she stayed in, and I got to taste new shrubs!

The next morning, we got on the road again.   after Ill-a-noy came Indy-Anna! 
Indy was in a whole bunch of movies in which he wore a hat and looked for treasures and traveled to interesting places.  I don't know who Anna was.  Anyway, we didn't find Indy or Anna there.  It was fairly quick driving through that state.

After Indy-Anna, we went to Oh! Hi-o!  
The people there must always be surprised to see you, so they say Oh!  Hi-o! when they meet you.  Everywhere else, people say the short form which is just "hi" but not in Oh!  Hi-o!  We stopped at a rest stop there where I talked to lots of people, but that was in my last post so I won't talk about that again. 

I forgot to say that Izzy the cat came with us.  She was with the male unit, in the truck.  The male unit is my lady's friend.  Sometimes he took me for walks too!  I quite like him.  Here is the male unit with the cat in the truck.  He smiles a lot.  

After Oh! Hi-o! we visited Pencil-Vanilla.  I didn't get to eat any pencils there, so I don't know if they taste like vanilla or not.  It was a very long state to drive through.  Sometimes the roads were very bumpy.  We visited a rest stop there, and there were some very unusual chickens at the rest stop on a bench.  My lady took a picture of them for me.  I wanted to remember those funny looking chickens.  We don't usually see these in Iowa.
Our next state was New York!  I was very excited to be there because of meeting Isobelle and her lady, Bev.  But I'll have to write about that later because I'm a tired goat and I need my beauty sleep.    Stay tuned for my next adventure posting soon!


Sunday, April 10, 2011

On the move!

Not a lot of time for a long post today.  My lady says we need to get going, and I am ready for my next public appearance.  See, I glow like the shining star that I am!  I am probably the first goat EVER to ride in the back of a Jetta from Iowa all the way to Nova Scotia Canada.
So far, I have been spotted in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and now in Pennsylvania.  Yesterday, I was a big hit with a bus tour of senior humans!  They all wanted to pet me and I had my picture taken countless times.  Here you can see them all coming over to visit me.  I am on the sidewalk, sort of to the left, with my lady.  It's a bit hard to see me.  Just follow the crowd...
My lady's friend took me for exercise.  I think he's still a little confused about what species I am.  Oh well, it was the thought that counts.  She says he's going to be around a lot so I need to goatucate him (that's goat education) about a few things.
Oh goodness, she is hurrying me along...we really must go....but I will post again soon!  Goatie kisses!!!