Rocky's Revenge

Death squad

Well I cheated death not once but twice yesterday in case you were wondering.

Rural Lyfe Is Hard.

I had yesterday afternoon off, which allowed me to attempt some ultimately fruitless  errands (I swear the lady at the Newport DMV has it IN for me). It also allowed me to contemplate how sore and achy my body was and to locate the tiniest hint of flu-ish, fevery feelings. Never stop moving is the moral of that story. Like a shark.

Anyhypochondria, with this unique combination of aches and flu-ey feelings I began to convince myself beyond the shadow of a doubt that I had in fact contracted rabies. 

Ok to be FAIR it is NOT wildly out of the realm of possibility. If you'll recall, I mentioned my newly bloodthirsty best friend Bitsy, who has taken to dragging still living mice friends INTO MY BED IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT. One such mouse, in struggling to free itself (I was helping -- it's one thing to be presented with an already dead mouse but if it's still alive I'm liberating that fucker) BIT MY MOTHERFUCKING FINGER, drawing blood. It managed to escape Bitsy's death grip only to be caught the next day. Poor mouse. But please don't bite my finger is the moral of THAT story.

There are lots of morals in this story.


I will interject here to undermine my own argument regarding how sane it is for me to believe I had rabies. On more than one occasion I have convinced myself that I had spinal meningitis and an aneurysm and also cancer, like all the time. I'm not saying it's normal. 

So my imminent foamy-mouthed death is just on the backburner of my mind when I arrive at the farm for the evening milking. I feel I've gotten fairly competent at handling the animals, and have even started to know more than just the handful that I took an immediate shine to (Shifty, Shirley and Snoidy and Chuli say WHAT). But I am still not like the most confident around them. I like to treat them as friends and have a hard time being assertive with them, especially given that I almost accidentally killed Rocky that one time.

So before the milking gets going I have to get the girls into their respective pens, which means getting them out of pasture, ideally without SHOCKING ONESELF YET AGAIN ON THE FUCKING FENCE (FENCE: 2 GITTLES: Negative A Thousand) and there is a brief period wherein all 40 of them are smooshed into one pen with you until you are able to separate them out into their appropriate areas. This requires moving through a sea of squirming goats to get from the little window you just jumped into to the gate where you free the littlest ones who are desperate to get away from the bigger meaner girls. Oh did I mention these bitches are all in heat? HORMONE CITY. 

I have successfully done this rather daunting thing before but for whatever reason (karmic goat vengeance) I got stuck. Like STUCK. Like pushed up against a wall and unable to move and unable to open the door because the goats were pushing it too hard and they themselves were getting smooshed and I was in danger of dislocating both knees and I started to panic and hyperventilate and I was all ME AND THESE GOATS ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE IN HERE. 

I mean clearly we did not, as I am not blogging from the great fucking beyond. Get real.

What DID happen was that I had to call Barry for help, which was embarrassing on multiple levels, because it forced me to confront the reality that I still can't do this all on my own without being potentially crushed to death or disfigured. And also because I was verging on panicked tears and Barry is not the most socialized human being so I'm trying to compose myself and then he sort of starts yelling at me for not being tough enough which is not the first thing you want to hear seconds after you escape grave injury.

But there is no fucking crying in farming, you dig?

Is the moral of THAT story.

Anyway, so I lived. 

Death: Zero Gittles: 2

#lifemath