Ramblings (more coming soon)
I Ain't Afraid of No Goats
While the following story is true, the names, dates, and circumstances have been changed to protect the guilty.
Several years ago, a coworker and I were sitting in the airport preparing to fly to Guadalajara, Mexico to attend a Corporate Safety Conference. As we sat there waiting for our flight to be called, he grabbed a newspaper out of his carry-on bag and began to thumb through it. I could see from where I was sitting that this was no ordinary newspaper. It was one of those countrified, home-grown, backwoods, banjo music, and rusty farm equipment local types of classified paper that advertises thousands of odds and ends for sale or swap, from Anti-Bo-weevil Spray to Zebra Print Overalls. I was intrigued.
As you may know from reading my previous posts, I am rather fascinated by - the oddity that is - the fainting goat.
This fascination began one year while I was in Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500. As we retired at the hotel after a day at the races, we turned on TV and started watching America’s Funniest Home Videos. After a montage of hit-in-the-groin clips, a seemingly mundane video came on of a farmer feeding his goats. Suddenly, and for no reason at all, right in the middle of the feeding, the man let out a loud yell. All five goats’ legs locked stiff, their entire body became rigid, and they fell over on their side like an inanimate statue, legs sticking straight out, fainted and dead to the world. It was like someone had set them up like pins and bowled them over. Then, just as suddenly as they fainted, they popped back up a few seconds later. No harm, no foul.
Now, it may have been the sunburn, the race exhaust fumes, severe dehydration, heat stroke, forgetting my medication, too many nachos, or just how tired I was, but at that moment, that was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my entire life. I laughed so hard I blew NEHI orange drink out of my nose and it burned so badly that tears ran down my cheeks. And I wasn’t even drinking NEHI at the time. And I didn’t stop laughing for three days straight.
From that moment until now, every goat I see along my driving path or anywhere, I will yell, scream, blow the horn, or make whatever loud noise I can to try to make the goat faint. I’ve even tried it on cows and other animals. Sometimes even people. My wife is so embarrassed by this that she refuses to ride with me if I continue this bizarre behavior. She also thinks I need a straight jacket and a lifetime membership to the local mental institution. So far, the goats have won. Not one fainter in all of my eight hundred tries. And my wife doesn’t ride with me anymore.
Well, back in the airport, my curiosity is killing me. I asked my coworker, “Hey, are there any fainting goats in that paper for sale?” He mumbled something under his breath about why does he always have to travel with the idiot, and flipped through the classifieds until he came upon the ‘Exotic Farm Animals” section. I was surprised when he paused, grinned, looked up and said “Well, would you look at that. Here they are”.
Right there in black and white, between the Emus and Horned Frogs, were the fainting goats for sale. In the very first ad, he read to me a fainting goat was offered at the amazing low price of only $165, AND a bonus set of Ginsu knives would be included at no extra charge if you ordered in the next 30 minutes. Wait. What? That is a steal! Do you realize just how much entertainment you can get out of a $165 fainting goat??? I figured they would cost at least a few thousand. Heck, one NASCAR ticket for one single race can be more than that. The old farmer must not know what a gold mine he has.
Listen closely now…Let’s say, for instance, that the average lifespan of a fainting goat is about ten years…that averages out to only about four cents a day! Then, if you get all red-necked-entrepreneurial, and charge your friends five dollars a faint, you can make some ludicrous farm animal money! Get yourself ten fainting goats on your farm, set up some white painted, half-tires in the ground that form 10 individual lines, and at $5 a faint, you could be a millionaire in a week.
So, I’m ready to buy me a fainting goat. I already have my checkbook and my cell phone in hand and I’m asking my coworker for the phone number of the seller. And hurry because I must have those knives.
But, wait, hang on a minute. Before any major purchase, you have to ask yourself the serious questions that must be answered in order to make a rational and educational decision.
Such as –
How many ‘faints’ does the average fainting goat have in him?
Will he faint 27 times then the warranty expires and he doesn’t faint anymore?
Does he faint 200 times then dies?
Are there ‘dud’ faints where he stays upright and only farts and quivers a little?
If so, will I have to refund anybody’s money?
Can I breed him with another animal and create a new species of fainters?
Will my goat be as Brian Fantana described his cologne in Anchorman? “Sixty percent of the time, it works every time”
With my luck, I will buy the fainting goat with the bad ticker and on the very first faint, he will have a cardiac arrest, poop himself, and be a vegetable in a coma for 7 years on life support. Then I will be the one that must sit by his hospital bedside day and night, listening to the breathing machine and the heart monitor, in an attempt to talk him out of his coma only to finally one day have to make the awful and painful decision to pull the plug. All the while, angry goat picketers are outside questioning who am I to play God over which goat must live or die.
And unless I was lucky enough to have found and gathered up 33 friends at $5 each to watch my goat’s first, last, and only faint, I’m out 165 bucks, plus the seven years worth of medical bills. Not to mention the goat mob trailing my butt.
That’s too many questions and not enough answers.
I’m thinking – Naaa, Naa, Na.
In order not to suffer from the pain and indignity of buyer’s remorse, I will refrain from purchasing a fainting goat on impulse at this time.
Wait. What about a screaming goat?