The Honest Courtesan

Meet Hercules, the newest resident of Sunset.  Ever since Jae gave Shiloh to a petting zoo over a year ago, the grass in the paddock has been getting out of hand; Jonathan just doesn’t eat enough by himself to keep it all clear.  So I asked Jae to find someone giving away a goat, and she succeeded just over a week ago.  Hercules was trained to be a pack goat, but just over a year ago he escaped his pen and ate most of a sack of feed; somehow, he managed to survive the resulting colic, but never really recovered enough to be a pack animal again, so his owners just wanted to give him to someone who needed a brush eater.  Last Wednesday we took Jae’s van up to Port Angeles to get him, and for the past week I’ve kept him tied to a post with a long enough rope for him to graze and browse; on Sunday I tried letting him off the rope for a while, but as soon as we went inside he found the stile and within minutes was standing on the front porch.  So he’s tied up again; yesterday I got a tag for his collar and today I’m going to put a temporary block on the stile, and we’ll try it again.  The other animals seem okay with him; Jonathan lived with goats for the first few years of his life, and the pigs are mostly just ignoring him.  So here’s hoping he settles in and is able to adequately perform the function I got him for.