Goat Girl Friday Round-Up

I could see from my vantage point in the woods that three ducks on that log would never work. I think they had some long term issue going on. It had that kind of vibe. They were so preoccupied they didn’t care that I kept coming closer and closer. They were still there flapping when I turned back to the trail.

This sweet girl and her mate patrol the ruins of an old stone farmhouse, the environs of which have been turned into a county park near Mazomanie, Wisconsin. It was her job, you know, to come greet us. The sign said to stay a hundred feet away from the goats but who would possibly agree to that? I didn’t pet her or feed her any crackers although I don’t think she would have minded either.

Maybe the fence was there to keep us from the goats but I think it was to keep us from running our hands on the old stones of the farmhouse and wondering what it had been like to look out the kitchen window at the fields when the sun was coming up. There were long biographies of Mr. and Mrs. Matz whose farmhouse this was. Among other things, Mr. Matz, a German immigrant, said he thought all the time about how grateful he was to be in America. I think it said he came just in time to fight in the Civil War.

On our 400-mile day trip to the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, we stopped at three dog parks. The dog park in Madison had the ducks, the one in Viroqua was very hot with only one other user – a quite large man who wordlessly followed his wildly barking Chihuahua around, and the last was in Platteville, where we met a very chatty owner of a handsome husky who threw balls for Swirl and Punchy and might’ve taken us home for dinner had we stayed another five minutes.

Not everyone likes a very long drive in the country but I am glad we do. We drifted all day through Driftless and it was lovely.