Sunday, July 22, 2012

Butcher Knife Totin' Annie, Unrepentant Gangster

One of the first things I learned, aside from that some rabbits do not, in fact, breed, well... like rabbits. or even at all. Is that you should really spend a little time with a goat before you bring it home.

Let me tell you about Butcher Knife Totin' Annie.
We got our first two goats from the father of a friend of mine. He had a bunch. Most of them were nearly wild, but I didn't realize that soon enough. We went and picked out two.
I was careful. I selected the two does I wanted based on build, probability of them making at least decent milkers, and coat (because I knew one day I'd get around to tanning the hides on these girls and I wanted them to look good.
We got a young doe we named Brownie. She was stand-offish but easy going and wanted to be friendly.
Brownie has adapted well to life following the incident.

And we got a mature doe... we wound up naming her Butcher Knife Totin' Annie (props and a PBR to anyone who can tell me where we got that name.)
Anyway, Annie either just didn't like the accommodations here, or, she was just a... well you know.
So Annie got her name because I'd been listening to the Hindu Love Gods that week. And because anytime she made eye contact you just got the feeling she was waiting for everyone in the house to go to sleep so she could be America's first caprine axe murderer.
"I think she'd kill me if she could" Randy Newman
Well, it wasn't long before Annie made a break for it. And she kidnapped poor Brownie and took her on the lamb with her.
Now, there's about 900 acres of woods across the road, and another 800 out back,  all sitting between two state highways. But I consider myself a decent tracker and I spent most of that day on Annie's trail until I finally lost her in a thicket.
I spent most of that weekend mad that almost $200 in goat futures was now wandering Coyote bait.
But, one morning early that next week, Sam (I'll explain him later) called me on his way to school and said "I think I found the goats!"
So I loaded up and sure enough, they were standing in the neighbor's yard about a quarter-mile away eating azaleas and yellow bells.
I quickly rallied the rapid response team. That would be Sam, who was already on the scene, Myself, E and Sam's mom Kimberly, and after about an hour long standoff the two fugitives were taken back into custody. I'd like to tell you that Ash was a tremendous help in this effort, but the truth is he was still too small to do much more than cower and wet himself any time he was around Annie.
Now that these two hardened criminals were back behind bars, er, yellow and black stringy electrified stuff and a bit of net wire. All should have been good and the residents of North Reagan were safe to return to their beds at night right?
Wrong.
Like any career criminal, the gate had no sooner closed on Annie than she was already hatching her next capper. And sure enough, a few days later she caught a guard napping, took his gun, pistol whipped him with it and bolted.
This time Brownie wasn't so sure a life on the run was for her though and kept lagging behind. First she forgot her purse, then she decided to wear pumps instead of heels, finally she had to stop off for a snack at the clover patch... All the while Annie was frantically yelling for her to "come the hell on!"
In the mean time, the unconscious body of the guard was discovered at shift change and the warning siren was fired up. And the rapid response team was redeployed to the scene.
At this point, even though I'm sure you can guess the ending if you've ever seen even one decent gangster movie, I guess I should explain how Johnny Law operates in North Reagan.
We are a peaceful people, usually opting for a live and let live attitude. But when it comes to hardened, psychotic, knife-toting livestock... the current philosophy is simple. You get one shot at reform and if it doesn't take, then you will be taken down "with extreme prejudice" and "by any means necessary."
So as Annie was standing at the front gate, trying to pull a distracted Brownie out with her, the order came down and the team sniper went into action.
Within seconds a single shot had echoed across the hollar and Annie's rampant, probably drug induced, crime spree had ended.
It was never admitted publicly, but there have been rumors that Brownie might have been deliberately dawdling, doing her own impersonation of Dillinger's "Lady in Red." We do know that aside from a week or so of solitary, her sentence seemed awful light.
When asked about the event the warden would only say "What we had here, was a failure to communicate! Some goats, you just cant reach... I don't like this, any more than you men."

The moral of this tale is two-fold. First, get to know your stock before you go to sleep around it.
And:
"If you're Ever in Reagan,
Boy you better do right!
Better not gamble,
And you better not fight..."



2 comments:

  1. As Ohiofarmgirl says: Goats=crazy!

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  2. We have nine now and mostly it's a good crazy... Unless there is a weather change coming. But I'm telling you, Annie was the kind of goat that got goats associated with Satan in the first place. Probably even an in-line descendant of The Goat.

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