"Out" Week: Day 2 & 3

The last couple of days have been a little surreal.

Not only did I successfully go without fiction--awesome, I know, go me--I also went without internet. (And phone, but then that's nothing new. I haven't had a phone in months.) 

I've been on a goat farm, an hour away from town. And by "town," I mean the tiny little rural community more than one of my acquaintances has referred to as "the boonies." My friends, you have not seen "the boonies" until you've driven so far into the forest that a goat farm looks like civilization.

It didn't improve my creativity, but at least I got some new information which will come in handy for writing in the future.

For instance, did you know that goats can be rapists? It's true! The more aggressive male goats--or "bucks", as we goat ranchers say-- will attack you if you turn your back, and try to rut with you. These goats really don't know the meaning of the word "no." (Literally, they do not. They are goats. They don't speak English. Unless you say "food." Then suddenly their little goat minds can transcend the species language barrier.)

Another thing I learned? Rats can infest chicken houses, and when they do, they eat the chickens' feet. Yup. They just chew 'em off one toe at a time, until the poor chickens are left with nothing but stubs, and are forced to buy costly prosthetics. And you don't even want to know what the co-pay is when you're a chicken.

Just kidding. It's a farm. You can probably guess what happens to footless chickens. And if you can't, I'll give you a hint: that machine does not make apple pies.

Ten points if you got that reference before seeing the picture.

Of all the lessons I learned in my day and a half or however it maths out at the goat farm, the most depressing may be this: goats will poop on their dead brethren. Two of the goat kids in the barn were sickly and ailing, refusing to feed. Over the course of the day, one got a little better-- started eating more, started running around-- while the other got weaker and more lethargic. My astute goat-tending friend predicted that the weak kid wouldn't last the night. In the morning, she was proven right. The poor little thing died before dawn.

And then his little friend pooped on his head.

There's a lesson for all of us in that, I think. Something about trials affecting us all, and being strong, or about not crapping on those weaker than us. I don't know. I can't think straight. I was up all night listening to the goats and their weirdly human screams. It seriously sounded like one of the goats was a man screaming, "WHALE! WHALE!" at the top of his lungs all. Night. Long. It was like a bizarre Moby Dick tribute.

So far, I don't feel particularly creative or enlightened... but that could be the three hours of sleep and all the fried food I ate at the county fair I went to today. The county fair, unlike the goat farm, taught me only one lesson: children grow up terrifyingly fast. I saw so many little kiddos I watched as babies, and they are all getting huge. Any day now I'm going to go into a bank and the person approving my massive personal loan is going to be someone whose diaper I have changed.

I really wish the world would slow the heck down.

Maybe that's a reason to write... to pin things down as they are today, before they go changing again. So we can remember what today was like, tomorrow. Because, as the old saying goes, those who don't remember history are doomed to plaster the Confederate flag across the back of their pickup truck. Maybe that's the lesson I learned.

Or maybe the lesson is, no matter how bad your writer's block gets or how many student loans you're currently defaulting on, hey! At least you're not a chicken having your toes gnawed off by rats while you sleep.

All I know is, they really need to re-name that goat. Forget Blueberry, he was clearly a Captain Ahab.