What in the World's "Goatin' On" Around Here? ...the rest of the story ~

Last week, I posted this... with a promise to tell the story behind the photo later. It has been an incredibly BUSY several days, but thought I'd better keep my word before Tim suspends our internet connection... We are outta here in only THREE MORE "GET-UPS!" (that's how the girls count down days).

And now, without further ado, here's what was "goatin' on" when Rebekah snapped her photo...

Boomerang (or Boomer for short), the goat, was given to us as a gift in honor of Mary Michelle's arrival... and Boomer (a she, I think... I didn't actually investigate) proved to be an entertaining addition to our menagerie.

If one of the kiddos disappeared from inside the house, said child was usually outside the house, observing the goings-on among all the critters living in our courtyard.

Boomer was taken from her mama (which, I'm told, both highly protested) and after arriving chez nous, latched on to our bunny ("Menthe") as her foster mama. If the bunny left the cage, the goat started crying and screaming until the bunny came back.

If the chickens harrassed the bunny too much at feeding time, Boomer transformed into a "bunny protector," making sure s/he (again, I've not investigated) had a fair share of the "yum-yum."

And then one day, a peacock decided to come for a visit. Finding out that Nigeriens like to keep peacocks was a bit of a shock. Tim says they eat them - as they aren't a whole lot different than an overgrown, fancy-tailed chicken; but I think it is more of a status thing to have such a fancy bird, and relatively, birds don't eat much. The first time we knew of these birds visiting our yard, I was terrified. One of our neighbors actually had a pair and they landed on the roof of our home early (right-after-morning-prayers-early) one morning. It woke me up and I literally thought that 1) We were having a coup d'état and I'd heard the first munition firing, or 2) the huge tree right outside our house had fallen on the roof which was now collapsing in on top of us. They literally made that.much.noise just landing and walking around. For what it's worth, tin roofs do tend to be noiser than cement ones ~ thus it also took me a long time to get used to the sound of lizards scurrying across the metal.

Boomer, apparently, wasn't any more impressed with marauding peacocks than I had been, especially not if they were bugging his/her little white bunny foster "mama." Boomer went on the offense! And, if you want to know how hard headed our little goat is, just ask Elsie Mae. She came stumbling into the house crying one afternoon, covered with sand and bad-mouthing the goat. It wasn't too clear exactly what she was saying... 2 year olds are difficult to understand sometimes, especially when they are upset, but I did catch the word goat several times. After the older siblings meandered into the house to check on Elsie's status, I got the rest of that story: Elsie was eating a cinnamon roll or something which the goat decided she wanted and so took it from her. Not appreciating that, Elsie retaliated. The goat respondedwith a head-butt to Elsie's posterior, which knocked her right over, face first into the sand. I so wish I had a video of those few minutes, but alas... I don't.

The peacock didn't appreciate being on the receiving end of our head-strong Boomer's focused attention, either. It hightailed it (I don't mean that literally... he actually tucked his tail while he was on the run.) out of the courtyard pretty quickly after the above "encounter."