OTIS!!!!!!!! (BHAC Margie Edition)

Otie Goat was a nuisance, a very cute, useless nuisance.

My friend, Doreen, and I went with Mr. Jarvis to the Nokesville livestock auction as he wished to purchase a steer with the intention of taking said purchase straight to the slaughter house as he couldn't bear the thought of eating any of the cows he had raised from calves at his farm. At the livestock sale, there are many people assembled in the parking lot a la "flea market" with assorted goods and creatures for sale. Doreen and I wandered around looking at all the offerings until I spotted one old man with goats for sale.

Otis was a cute goat. About as big as Matlock, maybe a little taller, with a dark brown coat flecked with fawn, white ankles and huge gray ears. He was very inquisitive, as goats are, and I got a bit caught up in petting him.The man selling the goats spotted me as a sucker and said he'd sell him for $10. I said No, no goat and he said "He's neutered, dehorned, has all his shots and he's been wormed." Somehow, that sounded like too good a deal to pass up and I forked over the $10 and Doreen and I stuck the goat in the front section of Mr. Jarvis' gooseneck stock trailer.

Back inside the auction, bidding had begun on a very large white bull. Mr. Jarvis bid actively until he acquired the animal. Quite satisfied with himself, he prepared to leave as a very large farm type guy in overalls came up to us.
"You the feller who bought that there bull?" he asked.
Mr. Jarvis allowed as to how he was the purchaser, yes, he was.
"What you going to do with old Tiny?"
Slaughter him.
"We was kind of afraid that'd happen to Tiny. He shore is a good bull. :-(" Only reason he's here is the owner is coming around to an all purebred operation and old Tiny here had to go. Yup, shore is a good bull"
Mr. Jarvis felt all his best intentions swallowing him up.
Being of stern stuff, he hiked up his belt in the way that men with large belt buckles and bolero string ties are inclined to do and he turned to go pay for his cow and get him loaded on the trailer. Mr. Jarvis was less than pleased to find a goat in his trailer but was quite taken aback by the thought of poor Tiny's forthcoming demise, so all he said was "He's not coming to my barn" about the goat.

For a few weeks, Otis lived behind the efficiency cottage that Ken (boyfriend #1) and I rented. Otis was on a chain tied to a tree, like a hound dog but there were no cars up on blocks. Feeling sorry for Otis, since he was so cute, and convincing my friend, Sharon, that her new property was in desperate need of a goat's wonderful brush clearing abilities, I convinced Sharon that Otis should live at her house out in Marshall.

Now, Sharon and her husband, Bobby, had dogs. Big black dogs. Bobby was known to our own Grizzles dog and my son, John, as "Big Dog Bob." Sharon and Bob's fawn great dane bitch, Baby, (I know), got knocked up by some other big dog and the resulting litter of three ended up with one surviving pup, Brutus. Sharon decided that Brutus would be a lonely puppy without another black puppy to play with so Bruno was acquired. Bruno looked like a flat coated retriever, except he wasn't and he happily joined the fun at Sharon & Bob's house.

When Otis came to live with them, the dogs thought they had died and gone to heaven, as Otis joined right in with the dog play. Round and round the yard they raced! Into the Water Tub! Out of the water tub, into the water tub, etc, went the two pups and Otis.

This amused Sharon until she had to clean all the mud out of the water tub several times a day. When they tired of that game, they played a great game called "greet the visitors", barking madly and racing down the driveway everytime someone came over to visit. The dogs and goat would run straight at the car, with the two pups splitting off on either side to bounce and bark at the car doors while Otis leaped on to the car's hood! Fun! Fun! Fun!

This usually caused the person driving to stop the car but they couldn't roll their windows down to yell because the dogs were RIGHT THERE! Otis would then leap from the hood to the roof to the trunk and back again. This was all accomplished with great amounts of noise. Dogs barking, Otis BAAAAAAAAAing. Sometimes people didn't come back.

Other times, people in the know would call before coming over, a situation that Sharon rather appreciated but it did get annoying after a while. The beginning of the end of Sharon's patience was the day that she was out in the sheet metal clad barn, caring for the horses.

Sharon had a head cold, or a hang over, or just plain lack of sleep but, when Otis ran up the set of stairs outside the barn and up onto the metal roof and began to run back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth, Sharon snapped. Up the stairs she ran, brandishing a broom and screaming "I'm going to KILL THE GOAT"

Much to her dismay, Otis took one look at her coming and leapt right off the roof!

Sharon crept to the edge and peered down at the giant boulders two stories below. No crushed goat body! She turned around, ready to cry and apologizing for being so mean to Otis, when she saw him coming back up the stairs all ready to do it again!

After that, Otis got tied to a tree by the dog collar he wore around his neck.

Previous little Otis episodes had included him standing on the back porch railing, walking his front hooves out along the kitchen window sill and looking in while Sharon's sister in law was doing the dishes. She looked up and there was a goat in the window "BAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!"

She dropped the dishes.

Right around that time, we girls had been in the living room, having a nice chat, when Otis (outside on the front lawn) decided to join us and ran straight at the house and leaped up SMACK BASH into the sliding glass door which he apparently didn't know was there (or closed).

With Otis tied up, Sharon rather thought that things would calm down but Otis was at work. He would go round and round (and through) the tree until he was hanging by his neck with his feet barely touching the ground. Sharon would hurry out to free him. Soon she noticed that he did it as soon as she walked away.

Sharon decided she'd be better off if she didn't have to SEE Otis hang himself so she tied him up closer to the road, down at the end of the driveway.

She told me over the telephone that she could hear cars slow down and stop to help Otis. His loud bleating BAAA BAAA BAAA would get quieter as the people approached. She said you could tell when they attempted to leave as his voice would get louder.
Come Baaaaaack
Come Baaaaaack!
COME BAAAAAAACK
COME BAAAAAACK YOU BAAAAAAASTAARDS

Not long after that, Sharon gave Otis to her brother in law, who took him to live in their large, fenced yard in Manassas Park with his bunch of dogs. The last we heard of Otis was that her BIL had to go to the Animal Shelter to bail out the dogs and Otis.