You know, almost all goats – both billies and nannys – are born with horns. Some of our human rulers remove our beautiful crowns by burning them off with a hot iron. It’s called disbudding, and we undergo this torture within our first 10 days of life. It’s akin to infant human boys undergoing castration! It hurts like hell, but we have no choice in the matter. Some of us die during the disbudding process and others are left with brain damage. Lucky, some goats with kind owners are sparred this harrowing ordeal.
But even without our horns, we have a natural tendency to scuffle with our brothers over turf and hay and treats. So, now hornless, we butt heads. It’s what we do. Sometimes we’re just playing around.
But it’s always a problem when we venture out in tribes (that’s what our groups are called) and cause too much mayhem. Sometimes we’re protesting to defend our comrades who are hauled off to slaughter houses. Many social-activist goats are just plain PISSED at humans who mistreat us, abandon us along the road, fail to trim our hooves, and condemn us for honoring our god, Pan. So, both horned and hornless goats get all wound up and start to rumble. Since butting a human would mean instant death by gun-happy hordes, we take out our aggression on each other. Heads start to bleed and bruise from punctures and excessive butting. It gives billies a bad name.
But all too often the media doesn’t focus on the REAL issue of goat abuse at the hands of human goat-a-phobes. Do the news crews bother to videotape scenes of goats being hauled away in trucks and slaughtered? NO! Such is life.
All I can tell my fellow billies is this: engage in PEACEFUL protests! You can gather together and roam the streets. Voice your concerns in dignified baaahs. Study up on civil disobedience. Follow the words of Thoreau, Martin Luther King and Gandhi. And, to paraphrase Good Human Johnny Cash: Don’t take your horns to town. Literally and figuratively.
Oh, and every now and then it’s totally okay to POOP on the road, but do it discretely.
— Molino, Sept 9, 2020
SING IT, JOHNNY!
Oh, sure. They’ve accused me of lacking originality, just because I occasionally pen clever parodies of famous songs and poems. Those boorish Capitol Steps people do it, and they’re not one bit FUNNY. Face it: I’m very good at livening up the classics with puns about bodily functions. But, baby, I ain’t going anywhere NEAR “Golden Slumbers.” (Though it IS tempting, given what’s-his-name’s new disclosures; I do like to stay up on current events out here in the field.) But, man, messing with a Beatles song! McCartney would skin me alive. (Oh, I’m just KIDDING! He stopped eating meat right after he met me, you know.)
I don’t know any goat that’s 100% black or white or tan. Most of us are of mixed color, and proud of it. But I do know a few billies who are predominantly black, and I never understood how they could work at that racist place called ‘Maggie’s Farm.’ You know, it was ME who encouraged Bob Dylan to write a song about that lyin’, slave-drivin’ Maggie. I told him, I said, “Bob, the tune will fit right into your catalog of social injustice songs.”
But here’s what REALLY sticks in my cud: why would a goat like Stanley — with his beautiful, nearly all-black coat — not only WORK for Maggie, but stick his nose up her butt?? I don’t think he’s truly happy. He told me once, he said, “Mo, sometimes I get up in the morning and cross my hoofs and pray for rain.” Mags doesn’t care about him. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she sold poor ‘ol Stan to ‘Donnie’s Butcher House’ once she’s finished using his landscape services. Look at him here, CAGED! Heed my words, capri-comrades: never follow or revere anyone who doesn’t give a damn about you. (P.S. who the hell is Kanye West?)
You know I’m loath to brag, but I have to let you know that the U.S. Postal Service has chosen ME as the model for their special Goat Heritage Month stamp! Now, get out there and buy some friggin’ stamps and send a card to your mom — even if she’s in the hoosegow for peaceably protesting, or some equally HORRIBLE offense. You American humans built the world’s best postal system, so fight to save it from those lousy mugs from the bad side of the tracks.
Let me not to the breeding of true goats
admit false excrement.
Poop is not poop that alters when it constipation finds.
Or bends with the mucker to remove.
No, it is an ever-tumbling rain of pellets
That stick to hooves and shan’t be shaken.
It is the dung on every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although its grams be taken.
Poop’s no mere stool, that wagging butts
and tails doth lift to dump.
Poop alters not with mud and snow and sleet,
But bears it out, even to the last shovel’s doom.
If this be error or appears depraved,
I never shat, nor no goat ever brayed.
–Molino