The Fainting Goats Tale E-Book

Wanda Wood

• Herausgeber: Hard to Get Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 53

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Jon Tinsley, Junior is the man history credits for bringing the fainting goats home to Marshall County Tennessee. Follow the journey of this interesting little man and his legacy of myotonic mystery.

Leseprobe

THE FAINTING GOAT’S TALEby WANDA WOOD

© 2005 WANDA WOOD All rights reserved.

ISBN 9783958495487Contact [email protected]

CHAPTER ONE: WANDA’S TALE

I came to central Tennessee by way of “almost heaven” West Virginia. I’m originally from Pennsylvania, the “keystone state”, so named for being the keystone of the union at the formation of the Constitution. But I digress. Like so many others, I was lured to music city by the temptingly baited hook of becoming a published song writer. I had at least a hundred tunes in the can and figured I’d make it big in six months or so. John Sebastian had it right. There are something like thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville. There are at least ten times that many song writers. Every one of them carries a pencil and can write twice as better than I will. The lady who brings you your coffee, the guy who delivers your mail, and even the biker who pulls up beside you on the Honda Shadow at the stop light; everybody, and their brother, in Nashville, is a song writer. So with funds running low, bathed in the harsh cold light of reality, I was forced to rethink my plan. Fortunately, I discovered that in addition to writing songs, my repertoire of talent also extended to the penning of short stories. These titillating little tales found their way into all manner of local rags and even a few nationals. Short stories aren’t so vastly different from songs. Just run a bit longer and as a rule, they do not rhyme. Though I would fall short of my goal to become a millionaire by forty, short by about nine hundred, ninety-nine thousand, I manage a roof overhead and groceries on the table. More importantly, my parents could speak, without shame, of their eldest daughter, the writer. A rustic three-room cabin in the hills about thirty miles north east of the city became my sanctuary. True, it needed a few things like electricity and plumbing, a new roof and at least one wall. Well, I did say rustic. The realtor told me it was built in nineteen hundred and one. Judging by the slanted floors and sagging roof, I could believe it. A huge tree blocked the dilapidated porch just mere yards from the highway. The lady at the liquor store, where I just one day happened to stop and ask for directions, (clears throat) ..anyway, said that her cousin use to own the place and that the tree was a weeping elm. Now you may or may not know. I for one did not know that the weeping elm is not native to Tennessee. Local lure tells us the pirate, Lafayette, brought the sapling up the Cumberland river, using it to mark the spot where was buried his gold doubloons and pieces of eight. The roots of the massive plant filled the front yard, lifting the house off the ground in several places. The limbs created such a canopy the building could not be seen in satellite photos. I wasn’t hiding out but I was hidden, and quite okay with that. A tortured tobacco barn and twenty overgrown, rocky acres rounded out the mix. An old red hound of dubious ancestry claimed the place as his own but let me stay on. In gratitude I made sure the food and water bowls stayed mostly full. We got along swimmingly. He grew to be my best friend and my muse. Everyone who loves dogs has that one dog that stands out. Mine would be Dumas. I named him after the Dumas Walker horses whose red coloring he wore so proudly. He’s gone now but will always live on in my heart, man’s best friend incarnate.

Now my father had goats when I was a child. I have always loved them. And what comes to mind when you have twenty mostly rocky acres needing at least moderate tending? Why goats of course. So I decided to get a few to eat the brambles threatening to overtake not only the yard but the back porch. I assured Dumas they would be good company. He was quite skeptical but decided to go along with the plan. My first adult foray into the goat world was with African pygmy goats. For the amazingly low price of one hundred dollars, I purchased a lovely little black and white mama with her multi-colored adorable fuzzball doeling triplets. I’d just settled down for an evening of snacks and Stephen King after tucking in the little darlings when I was rushed outside by the sound of screeching tires and blaring horns. My precious babies were in the middle of the highway for reasons only they could know. I rounded them up with the bribery of corn. After closing them securely in a stall I resolved to make their enclosure escape proof. Come to finding out, when one is dealing with the pygmy goat, there is no such thing. These demure looking little creatures, as it turns out, are blessed with the Houdini gene. When they were not amusing themselves by going over or under the fence, they found great satisfaction in chewing their way right through it. Yes wire, woven wire, I had one once eat the better part of a discarded lawn mower battery and showed no ill effects. How they can manage such feats with no upper teeth is beyond amazing. Electric fence? Oblivious. Barbed wire made for them a nice back scratcher. And they were into everything. Because not only is it impossible for you to keep them in, if they want in somewhere you can’t keep them out. They are demons disguised as sweet furry little critters. Unless you have a lot of land and it doesn’t matter if they get out or if you want to build a fortified wall, don’t go with the pygmy goats. Well, maybe I just got a bad batch. I don’t know. As for me living so close to a major artery, tractor trailers running day and night, I feared the worst and quickly dispersed my little herd. Dumas and I agreed, goats are not our thing.

But then one day, while searching the world wide web, I discovered fainting goats. I was just as surprised as anybody to discover this is a real thing. These woebegone little creatures suffer from a genetic condition called myotonia. This causes them to stiffen and fall down, sometimes when they are excited, sometimes when they are scared, sometimes for no reason whatsoever. I bought two, just to see what they were like. Even without the novelty of fainting, they make wonderful pets. The fainting is a bonus.