Goat Mamma to the Rescue

I saved a life last night.  I am absolute certain I did but I know there may be a few of you to argue my point once you read the full story, that is fine.  I'm still convinced of my udder (yes) farmer brilliance.

Miss Fatty Patty the Pygora goat

So, at some point during the night last night Dr. Farm Hand (Timothy) starts talking to a deep sleeping me about a goat that is making noise.  He kept going on and on and I honestly could not grasp what he was really saying and was waffling between yelling at him to shut it and incorporating said goat noise into some type of distressed nightmare.  It took me a good while to actually realize I had to wake up and address this.  (That, I am blaming on the all too common decision lately to  have a second margarita after dinner.)  After I decided he was serious and it needed my attention, I went to the cracked bathroom window to get a better listen and sure enough I could hear a goat that sounded very distressed.

Now, the things going through my mind were varied.  Of course, it could be coyotes.  I haven't been too worried about them before and by most accounts, goats can take care of themselves.  What I was most convinced was happening was that I was going to walk into a goat birth.  I have two does and a young buck, so eventually this will be the case.  The buck is still young though and might not be tall enough to actually get the job done just yet.  I spend serious minutes every day looking at goat privates and bellies to get a feel for what is normal in appearance in hopes that I will eventually know what I am looking at when one is pregnant.  But alas, there was no baby being born.

What I did find was my sweet faced Fatty Patty sitting outside her bedroom with a cocked neck, her mouth stuck open at a very strange angle wagging her tongue around and making a hideous racket. At first glance I was sure she was having some type of neurological fit, the way she was carrying her head and only moving to one side and the very curious angle of her neck and jaw.  It was NOT pleasant to watch and I indeed started to panic that she had a serious issue and was going to need to be put down.  The Life of Fatty Patty flashed before my eyes. After a couple of minutes watching her, though, I realized there was something caught in/on her lip. I quickly grabbed her by the fleece and stuck her neck and shoulders between my legs to secure her, all the while with her resisting and protesting VERY loudly.  She sounded alarming enough that Dr. Farm Hand actually walked outside the bedroom in his imaginary pajamas to see what I had found and assess my need for assistance.  Turns out, it was a matt of fleece that she had gotten stuck in her side teeth when she was scratching an itch on her neck.  I was able to free her lower jaw from the matt of hair and massage her jaw and little chiny chin chin without even getting bit!  She immediately ran over to the matriarch goat, and hid behind her, as if looking for reassurance.  Then, she burped.  She burped a bunch.  I have no idea how long she had her jaw caught, but after about another 10 minutes of observation I was convinced she wasn't going to die and everyone was ready to return to sleep.  It's worth noting, though, that this entire time I was saving Fatty from Certain Doom, Petey, the goat that thinks he's a dog, seemed to think I had just appeared out of the blue, at 3am, solely to rub his chest and head.

So there you have it.  I was cool in the face of crisis.  I muscled in and wrangled a desperate goat in need of medical attention, unaided.  I used all of my faculties and tools available, which last night consisted of a flashlight and a cell phone in case I had to hysterically call a neighbor.  And I did all of this at 3 am, in the mostly dark, without my glasses.  I am, a Lifesaving Goat Mamma.