TheBanyanTree: Memories ... "the rest of the story"?

[Snowgoose]

I've been sitting here at my window, watching in shivery fascination as
ice fog swirls around ice and snow shrouded trees. It is -10F out there
and I do not want to go outside. This seems like the perfect time to tell
a story <grin>.

It started like this . . .

Back in the late winter of '96/'97 (February, if I remember right), I 
was fairly new to the Internet. I was having a BLAST, having just 
discovered "Goat lists" online (there were three, I think, back then 
<grin>), e-mailing the few family members and friends who were online at 
that point and taking "creative writing" classes at the Virtual 
University (which is still up and running - and I still take an 
occasional class <smile>).

One evening, I came home from work and signed on to GoatsLite, my 
favorite goat list. A Subject Line topic caught my interest immediately. 
It was "Hale Bopp from a Snow Plow!"  HUH???  What in the world is this 
and why is it on my goat list? (I said to myself <g>)

So I clicked on it and read it (to read this story yourself, click on:  
http://www.springpromisepygmies.com/fandS.htm )

It was SUCH a good story (as you can read for yourself <grin>), I 
checked the top of the post and found the original poster (people hadn't 
figured out cutting and pasting to get rid of the clutter yet <grin>). 
The web name was "Frosty" and the address was listed, so I sent off a 
quick reply - thanking the person for writing such a fun story. I told 
the writer it had made me feel like I was right there with him, watching 
the northern lights and the Hale Bopp comet . . . I'd never been to 
Alaska, so it was a wondrous story. :)

Low and behold, he REPLIED the following day! EEEK! A total stranger! 
<grin> Of course . . . as most of you know we became online friends and 
eventually ended up married and I moved (goats and all) to Alaska.

But THIS story is about Frosty's first visit to Michigan <VBG>

Yeah, OK, I admit it . . . we fell in love "online". Although it started 
out innocently, eventually (over a period of mere months <blush>) we 
were e-mailing daily, then ICQ-ing, then talking on the phone . . . all 
of which led to the all important "First Visit". Yikes! What had I 
gotten myself into? <L> Internet "dating" was pretty new back then.

I was a basket case. Here I was, 46 years old, in love (only a couple 
years after a REALLY bad divorce and sworn never to get involved with a 
man EVER again) with a man I had never even met in person. How was this 
possible??

My friends were concerned (I did NOT tell my family <grin>). They made 
me promise to bring him by for "inspection" before allowing him anywhere 
near my home (seemed a reasonable precaution). So I met him at the 
airport (I'm smiling again, reliving that heart pounding moment as he 
came walking across the tarmac towards me - it was a small airport in 
northern WI <g>). He was all smiles, but looked just as nervous as *I* 
felt. It was great though - within minutes we were chatting away just 
like online, only we could SEE each other.

It was a two hour drive from the airport to my small UP town (Ironwood, 
MI). I was feeling pretty comfortable that he was not an ax murderer by 
the time we got into town. I broke the news to him that we were meeting 
two of my best friends at a local coffee spot. He grinned like a loon 
and admitted he figured I'd do something like that. Can't be too 
careful, dontchaknow. It turns out he had brought BOTH of them gifts. I 
called it bribery, but what the hey <grin>. Smart move on his part.

He had already given me a gift (right at the airport - he couldn't wait 
<grin>) ... an absolutely gorgeous pair of authentic, hand carved walrus 
tusk ivory earrings (native Alaskan Indians - we have seven tribes in AK 
- eskimos are just a "generic term" for them - are the only ones who can 
legally still carve ivory here). These were delicately carved in the 
form of sleeping geese - Snow geese, no less! Perfect! Talk about 
winning ME over (not that he needed to at that point <grin>).

Anyway, after whiling away an hour or so over coffee, Kris and Debra 
gave Frosty a thumb's up <grin> and I was allowed to take him home 
unchaperoned. NO, you are not getting the details <L>.

We arrived on my farm late afternoon (it was May - Memorial Day 
weekend). I showed him around, taking him out to see the goats (of 
course), making sure he knew not to turn his back to my head Embden 
gander ("Chong" was a sneaky guy) and enjoying his delight in watching 
the flock of big white geese, wings spread, run down the grassy slope of 
my yard to the creek and splash in; swimming, dunking, flapping and 
bathing enthusiastically.  I introduced him to my border collie, 
"Bonnie" (a very shy rescue dog who did not trust ANYONE except me - and 
men were especially low on her list <sigh>), who surprised me by NOT 
disappearing immediately into her dog house, but hesitantly slunk up to 
him to sniff. That was all she was willing to do, but it was WAY more 
than she'd offered anyone else. A good sign.

We let Bonnie off her tie-out and she accompanied us as we took my 
4-wheeler for a tour of my 40 acre "hobby farm", splashing through a 
low, gravelly spot in the creek where it ran behind the barn so we could 
get to the back part where I had a nice stand of "Christmas trees" 
growing.  As we sat there enjoying our surroundings, I let him in on a 
private "family" joke.

The snow was usually too deep by Christmas to make the long trudge on 
foot back to this part of the farm for a tree, so they just kept growing 
larger and larger. The one year my [then teenage] son, Dan, and I had 
gone to all the effort of braving snow drifts to come cut our own tree 
on our own property (they were LOVELY trees <sigh>), we cut a beauty! 
Dan and I dug deep down in the snow and he hand sawed what looked like 
about a 6' frazier fur, taking turns dragging it home. It LOOKED way 
smaller in the field - when we got it home, it turned out to be closer 
to 8' tall <L>, so we had to cut it yet again, using the excess branches 
for decorations around the house. Ohh, what good memories. The real 
funny part though, was when we went back out the next summer and 
discovered the snow had been deeper than we'd realized - we found the 
"stump" where we'd cut our Christmas tree, only to find we'd only cut 
off the TOP. We'd topped a beautiful tree - unknowingly leaving a 4' fur 
"bush" to continue growing <hehehe>).

On the way back to the house I showed Frosty my favorite (deep) fishing 
hole and the wild apple orchard where the white tail deer liked to 
congregate. All the while, we were getting better acquainted. :)

I finally showed him around my old farmhouse, letting him say hello to 
my three house cats (I was nervous about that, too <grin>), my 50 gallon 
tank of goldfish and my 30 gallon tank of red-tail turtles. I knew 
Frosty didn't have ANY pets at home and wasn't too sure how he was going 
to take my menagerie. As it turned out, he LOVED animals, but with his 
work schedule, didn't feel it would be fair to the animals to leave them 
alone so much. His last pet had been a Curly Lizard <g>.

Still . . . this is just leading up to the *real* story <grin>.

I cooked him dinner and we were enjoying a quiet after-dinner glass of 
wine when I heard the all familiar "sounds" on my baby monitor. Hey - it 
was May, remember? <big sigh> Yep, here I was with a MAN in my living 
room at 10:00 PM for the first time in years . . . and a doe goes into 
labor. Go figure, eh?

We both donned jackets and headed for the barn. This was, of course, a 
new experience for Frosty (his name, btw, is actually Jerry. It took me 
years to get used to calling him Jer instead of Frosty <L>), who was 
quite interested in the whole procedure. Which would have been FINE, 
except this doe looked to be having problems. We watched and waited for 
a while (me hoping and praying for an easy delivery to show Frosty how 
fun goat raising was), but finally I had to admit to him this was not 
going normally. I left him out there watching the doe and came back into 
the house to call my friend and "goat mentor", Kris. She came right over 
(good "goat friends" are priceless, aren't they?). "Misty" was a doe who 
had previously given me singles two years running, both LARGE doelings, 
so we had an idea what the problem was. This one looked to be the 
biggest of the bunch, and by the time Kris got there I could tell it was 
coming head first and I could NOT get my hand past that huge head to 
pull a leg up. Kris, who had nearly 30 years experience, didn't have any 
better luck.

At 11 PM, we told Frosty he might as well go back to the house and get 
some sleep (remember, he'd had a long day; driving to the airport, the 
looong flight, long drive home, meeting new friends and everything else) 
- Kris and I were headed for the vet clinic with the doe. We had a GOOD 
goat vet back in MI <sigh> ... oh, how I wish I could have convinced him 
to move to Alaska! By the time we got to the clinic, the doe had managed 
to pass the head out (at that point we were hoping she wouldn't!), but 
the rest was stuck tight. Dr. Dan was not able to budge it either - 
there was no way to pull the kid successfully OR do a c-section, which 
was a real bad situation. He finally managed to get him out (a HUGE 
buckling - large head and big shoulders - if only just ONE leg had been 
forward she could have delivered him with help, but with both legs back, 
the shoulders were just too wide), but not alive. I won't go into 
details. Suffice it to say, this was not what I would have preferred for 
Frosty's first experience with raising goats <sigh> and was glad he 
hadn't come with us to the vet.

The doe lived through it though (and went on to give me yet ANOTHER 
single doeling the following year, after which I retired her for fear of 
a repeat of that big buckling <grumble>), and Kris and I eventually 
brought her home and settled into the kidding pen. It was well after 
midnight, so I brought what was left of the evening's bottle of wine out 
while we waited for the afterbirth. It arrived about 30 minutes after we 
got home and was carefully checked and then disposed of. I remember 
being too tired to think, much less move. So there we were, the two of 
us (yes, my girlfriend KRIS and I <grin>) sitting on straw bales in the 
kidding pen at 1:00 AM; sipping wine, soothing a doe who was crying for 
her dead baby, discussing the day, the kidding, Frosty . . . hmm . . . 
Frosty?

Kris looked at me. I looked at Kris. I smiled and shook my head in wry 
amusement. What a day. Kris grinned and stood up. I still remember her 
words that night. She said, "Deb . . . WHY are you still sitting out 
here in a cold barn with ME, when you have a perfectly good MAN right 
across the yard, sleeping in YOUR bed?"

I had no answer for her. I just smiled back at her like a sap, blushing. 
Habit, I guess? I'd completely forgotten he was there. <BLUSH>

And that, as the saying goes . . . is the REST of the story. :)
-Snowgoose

--
Deb Frost / snowgoose
Spring Promise Pygmies; Wasilla, Alaska
dfrost at customcpu.com
http://www.springpromisepygmies.com
Pygmy owner since 1976, breeder since 1988
Member NPGA since 1991