25. Goats Mating
Good morning, Hank, it's Wednesday. Woke up yesterday at Mom and Dad's house at 8:30 in the morning to this painting of zombie me, admired the view of Western North Carolina from the porch and then decided to go for a walk. Hank I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you that today's video contains goat sex. And I don't mean that as like, some kind of weird euphemism, so.. yeah. Be advised.
So Hank, as you know it is possible to walk for many miles from mom and dad's house without ever seeing a person or a house. First I walked up this ridge and then wound my way down the ravine toward the- ah- I'm about to fall. John: "Save the camera! *sigh* Pro tip! Leaves are slippery." Anyway, I made it down to the creek eventually and then bushwhacked my way up the creek bed. I'd walked here the day before with Henry and explained that the trees had shed their leaves, which had fallen to the ground and how the dead leaves eventually become dirt that feed the still living trees and I was reminded of Rudolph Virchow's famous observation that all cells come from other cells. Life begets life. It's the realization that made all of modern biology and disease treatments possible and, yes, I'm getting to the goat sex. So if you keep climbing up the creek bed you can walk for miles up to the top of the mountain but as you can hear I was already somewhat tired so I decided to take the logging road down to visit mom and dad's goats. Hank as you are well aware, mom and dad raise goats and then turn their milk into very fancy soap and cheeses but in order for goats to produce milk they have to have babies and in order for that to happen… yeah.
When I arrived at the goats I immediately saw - yes, that is the male goat peeing on his goat beard and because I am an expert in unusual animal mating habits I immediately knew that this was a surefire sign that love was in the air. Lady goats, it turns out, love a good pee-stained goatee. Oh! Goat. Eee. Just got that. After the ceremonial peeing on the beard there was some cuddling and some tail-wagging and the rubbing of the pee-beard across the body of the lady goat and the whole thing was frankly taking forever, like, if this were a Kardashian reality show, I could have stretched my footage into four episodes- wait! Are those his… oh my God.
I figured I might be discouraging them from actually getting in business so I hid a little whereupon the guy started humping all the wrong parts of the lady and then just as I was about to give up and walk home: SUCCESS! Terrifying, horrible, success.
I'm really glad Henry didn't see that, Hank, I think he would have had some questions. Some ways are more palatable than others but life finds a way, Hank, to make life from life and also to make life from that which was once alive. And I was so lost in thought about all of that that pretty soon I became massively and extraordinarily lost in the woods.
John: I am extremely lost. I have no idea where I am. Ohhh.. just.. I don't know where the house is in relationship to here. I'm gonna do the boy scout thing where you follow the water downhill until you get to a place or a person. That strategy worked out surprisingly well and eventually I caught my trail again. I knew I was on the path home when I saw the skid marks from my fall. If I hadn't slipped on those leaves, Hank, I don't know how I ever would have gotten home. And so it was that another life was saved by dead leaves. Hank, that's the news from the woods of North Carolina where, thanks to the hot, hot action you just saw, mom should have more milk for soap soon. I'll see you on Friday. Uh, I'm mostly filming this for posterity, if I die walking across this bridge I just want it stated for the record that I didn't want to walk across the bridge I just didn't know any other way to get back to the house. Come on, big money no whammies.
YES! I'm back on the road!
