I Could Have Been A Storm-Chaser

I could have been a storm chaser. I love watching storms come in. I will stay there until they are on top of me. And then some. Also, I am awesome with directions. I don't even own a GPS, and until this year I didn't even own a smartphone (and even that one doesn't have access to internet unless I'm at home, so I have to do maps old school, or use my actual sense of direction, which rocks). I don't even know how many times my daughter has said to me, "Mommy, do you know where we are?" and the answer is, "No, but I still know I can get where we are going." And I do.

A few weeks back I was driving home from work when I heard the emergency alert system come on the radio.  Thinking it was "only a test," I didn't pay it much attention, until I realized it wasn't only a test.  Apparently there was a massive storm system moving through the area with winds 60-70 mph and rain and hail and fun kinds of things.  Which normally wouldn't be too much of an issue.  Except that we'd had almost two weeks with no rain and had put our yearlings in a pen with no run-in.  So.  Rapid acceleration home.  Based on the track of the storm, I had about 30 minutes to get them in.  And of course, the goats never make things easy.  And neither does my husband.

I got home, and started moving goats around.  Because I couldn't simply just open some gates and have that be the end of it.  I had to play musical goat pastures, and move the angoras in order to move the yearlings, and then move the angoras back.  Yeah.  And the yearling's gate was tied with bailing twine. (WHY WHY WHY???!!!). Even though I bought all these nice goat-proof metal clips.  I HATE when things are tied with bailing twine.  Because I do NOT carry a knife on me at all times, because I CAN'T due to work reasons.  Of course there was no knife to be found in the barn.  I briefly considered using my teeth.  Then I thought about just using brute force.  Eventually I got the gate open.  And three of the four yearlings pranced through.  The fourth one, of course, got her head stuck in the fence.  And refused to be helped.  In order to get un-stuck she had to go backwards, and all her pals were in front of her.  Meanwhile, the stormclouds had started rolling in and it was getting kinda dark.  And dogs were barking and leaves were starting to spin. Ok, so to be honest, that is when I started yelling at the goat.  Eventually I got her out.  Meanwhile, her buddies had disappeared into the barn and were scattered around to see what trouble they could get into while unsupervised.  And this is when I started to question my own sanity in even having goats.  I think it took another 15 minutes, but eventually I got everyone where they were supposed to be.  They were not at all thankful, but wanted to know where their grain was. Of course they did. I fed everyone super quick, and then locked up and left them to their own devices.  Somehow I managed to get it all done and the storm was still not yet here.

So I took some pictures.  Let me also just take a minute to mention here that one of our neighbors was actually outside raking leaves while the storm was rolling in. Not bagging them or anything, simply raking them into a pile. I have no idea why. It was a little strange.

Clouds moving in.

More clouds.

Right after I finished taking pictures (I only went inside when the rain started coming down), there was a loud explosion in our front yard.  Like fireworks. And more dog barking, only this time it was coming from my dogs. I thought our transformer was blown, until I realized that we still had power.  Our internet was dead though.  My husband didn't believe me about the explosion.  He kept telling me that I must have been seeing and hearing things (riiiight).  Until he went to the barn the next day and saw our electric fence charger blown into little tiny pieces in the barn.  The one that we just paid to have re-built. But at least nothing caught fire, right?

Storm rolling in

The ungrateful goats