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Happy Birthday Coriander!

A week and a half after Ginger started showing every sign of labor except discharge, and a week after her due date, she finally started having discharge. It was nothing like anyone said it should be. I began to worry that she had an infection and that illness was the cause of her being late, but everyone I talked to said not to worry yet. To wait until 150 days from the date I brought her home, rather than the date she was bred. The next few days, I slowly began to abandon my vigilant watch by the window. I even worked myself up to going out into Ashland to pick up what we would need for the upcoming Colonial Ball fundraiser.

At 2:10 pm I got a text message from my fellow watcher and future sister-in-law, Katie. "Yeah i came out to check on ginger shes being very vocal staying primarily in her house and when she peed a yellow ish snotty thing came out." A minute later: "But again idk whats going on." The last comment referred to the fact that she'd had "yellowish snotty things" on her vulva for days, and been showing clear signs of labor for two weeks. Neither of us had the morale for a vigilant watch anymore, and I wasn't about to head home for another evening of trying to determine a baby wiggle from a rumen movement and a stretch from a contraction.

At 4:05 came another text message: "She had a boy still in labor." Including a blurry picture of a black and white thing. She later called me and told me that her mom had checked on him since it was muddy and she couldn't go outside. No one had videotaped or taken pictures. There was nothing. I missed every last bit.

I told my fiancé, Robert, that there was no point in going home if we already missed it, but ten steps into Best Buy I suddenly burst into tears. The store greeters were shocked. Robert pulled me out of the store and insisted we go home. After all, she might have another.

The first half of the way home, I told Robert not to try to comfort me by telling me it was okay, we could watch another goat kid. "Agree with me on how horrible this is, just this once." So the entire 45 minute ride home we talked about all ways the situation was terrible, and how mad we were at the baby for triggering the hormones that start labor on the one day I was far from home. We thought of all terrible things to name the baby, like "Telephone Pole," "Pepper," and "Pepe Le Peu," though I debated the last one since I like skunks. 

Home at last, I ran around back to the goat pen. Katie had come out and was aiming the camera from outside the pen to the inside of the goat house. "Wait until you hear all my funny commentary," she said. I was glad that I would at least have the video of right after the baby was born, until Robert came along and pointed out that that the camera wasn't on record. "My commentary!" Katie wailed.  

"Can I hold him yet?" I asked, hoping for a voice of reason to counter my emotions. 

"Wait to see if she's still in labor," Katie suggested. We waited an hour or more. Hoping to encourage her to refocus, I went in and picked up the baby. Ginger fretted, though, so I put him back before Katie even got a chance to hold him. We waited some more.

At last, she had the afterbirth. Everyone we knew who had goats said that the afterbirth means that its all over. Sure enough, she sucked it in bit by bit and when she was done, no one could tell anything was different except that there was a new little goat in the pen. I guess there was no need for those puppy pads... maybe we can work on house-training the dogs with them instead.

On the way back home from Ashland, I was terribly disappointed that he was black and white and a boy. Even though I wanted to purchase a wether, I had hoped for a doeling from Ginger, given that the sire was from Promiseland. When Ginger was done laboring, I picked him up and turned him upside down to double-check his sex. My future mother-in-law, Miss Robin, was right: He was definately a boy. Once I held him though, I realized he was different than I expected. He didn't have a splashes of white here on his hip, then opposite shoulder, and side of his face. He had quite distinct markings: a look of white facial hair covering his black face and neck in the form of a mustache and beard, and two white rectangles on each flank with unique black spots to break them up.

He started hopping about almost immediately, kicking his back legs up like a frog and joyfully experimenting with different ways to fall over. I realized then that even though I wasn't waiting for him, God had been preparing him to be the perfect little baby for me. He would certainly excel in training and agility if he showed such energy a few hours after birth. And those black dots and white markings would surely impress kids as much as they had already begun to impress everyone in the household.

We looked at our naming chart and found the most fitting name to be in the "Outgoing" row and "White" column: Coriander, or Cori. Only the flowers of coriander are white, and peppercorn probably would have fit more given his black spots, but Cori just felt like a better name for him, so we've kept it.

Welcome to the Caprichai Herd, Coriander!

Goat Wisdom: Food Everywhere

Ginger is the first animal I have been able to feed from my surroundings. In our early walks, she would always surprise me with what she would stop to eat. Many times I would offer her nice-looking leaf, and she'd turn it down. Soon I found myself looking at the different plants as we walked, thinking, "I wonder if that's good to eat?"

My friends tell me I'm turning into a goat, but humans have probably thought that way for most of their time in creation. Archeologists examining ancient animal carcasses found that humans ate after the big predators, meaning that they weren't hunter/gatherers, but rather scavengers. Meat was a treat left behind by animal hunters, while plants were the base human diet; humans spend most of their time wandering like goats and other vegetarian animals, seeking good things to eat in the surrounding natural gardens. Later history, when humans began to adapt to an agricultural life, supports a similar diet. Grown vegetables and grains formed the base, supplemented by found fruit and nuts, animal products like milk and eggs, and less frequently, meat. This is in sharp contrast to the standard American dinner, featuring a big helping of meat, some highly processed grains, and a small helping of some overcooked canned vegetables. Does archeology support certain circles of modern dietary science, or is modern thought merely rewriting our past?

Ginger's food pyramid seems to favor plants that grow high. She loves leaves the best, then bushes, then tall grass, then short grass. Rye is her favorite type of grass, which works out because it seems to grow all over the place. I found a patch growing in a parking lot, and another outside a mechanic's shop. In both cases, I thought like Ginger, "Good to eat," and wanted to take it home. Fortunately, my human sense took over and I considered that with all the toxins from cars around, it would not be something good to bring home for her. When I take her to the walking track, she quickly learns that all those beautiful bunches of pine needles are off limits, due to potential contamination from pesticides and whatnot. I feel bad that her instincts can no longer be her only guide in what is good to eat, and what is unsafe. I feel worse that humans are exposed to this problem every day when they bring produce home from the grocery store. Most people I know do not wash their fruits and vegetables like we are told. I don't think humans are lazy, I think that like goats, we have that instinct that this food is good to eat, and we aren't afraid of what poisons might be on it from the humans who hand it down the line to us.

The worst part yet is that no one, human or goat, can see a tasty plant in the wilderness and say with certainty, "Good to eat." Food, food, everywhere, but not a bite to eat.