Photo by Sue Weaver
Don’t we make a handsome bridal couple? |
I’m a big guy now and very manly—just ask Bella, the beautiful Nubian who came to visit last week. I helped her make babies! Here is the portrait Mom shot of us together before Bella went home.
Today mom looked at the sore where I’ve peed on my nose so much the hair came off. She said, “Martok, you were such an adorable kid; how did you grow up to be you?”
I think that’s called a hypothetical question.
But it made me stop and think about being a kid, back to the night I was born. That was pretty scary—my sisters and I almost died!
|
Photo by Sue Weaver
Dad taught me to compute when I was four days old, that’s why Uzzi and I are so good at Googling things. |
My first human mom was Emily Dixon of
Ozark Jewels. She’s a very conscientious breeder and she loves us goats really much, but a weird thing happened that night.
Emily set her alarm to check my mom in the night but she somehow turned it off in her sleep.
It was 5:30 a.m. when Emily woke up. It was March 4, super-cold and icy, and my mom had never had kids before. Emily grabbed a flashlight and raced to the does’ pen. Duke, the livestock guardian dog, dashed out of the farthest shed when he heard her coming.
Emily found my mom in another shed. She’d given birth and we weren’t there! Emily raced from shed to shed and found us in the one Duke had been guarding. We were dog-slobbery and nearly frozen, but alive!
|
Photo by Sue Weaver
Uzzi and I were buddies right from the start. He was bigger than me, but I caught up! |
Emily rushed us to the house and placed two of us by the woodstove but my other sister was more dead than alive, so Emily held her in warm water until she thawed out and then tube-fed her warm colostrum. Finally my sister was okay.
My present mom wanted a buckling to raise with Uzzi (he was a month old and came from Emily’s too), so two days later, Emily called Mom to come get me to be Uzzi’s pal. Mom named me after a Klingon warrior: Ozark Jewels General Martok so I’d grow big and strong. And I did!
And my sister, the cold one who almost died? She had triplets on our birthday this year and one of them is Edmund! He’s Mopple the sheep-geep’s buddy, just like Uzzi is my own best friend.
And that’s how I came to be me.
« More Mondays with Martok »