Goat got their goat

MANILA, Philippines - Billy, the friendliest male member of the “Goats Gruff” family of ruminants owned by my youngest sister, missed a chance to be part of the cenaculo or Lenten play this year. The life of Christ leading up to his crucifixion is always an integral part of the Holy Week celebration in the province. And because it starts with the birth in the manger, tame animals are always needed to be part of the opening scene. Thus, it made perfect sense that the organizers thought to enlist Billy to be part of the cast. After all, he had made their acquaintance by escaping from our yard often enough in the past. The locals knew him as the shameless animal that marked territory by performing bodily functions inside the barangay hall.

But Billy’s debut as a cenaculo performer was not to be.  This is because Milly Goat Gruff his female partner is pregnant, and it would not do to make her go along and risk suffering a miscarriage with all the exertion. Nor was it a good idea to let her stay behind while bleating piteously and struggling to get loose from the holding pen while trying to tag along.  And so without the excitement of being part of a Lenten play, the goats in our provincial home continue with their idyllic lives. They roam the fishponds, feed on the greenest patches of vegetation (including vegetables for human consumption that they aren’t meant to eat), and occasionally require rescuing from the high branches of trees that they somehow manage to climb. They live and feed and breed without danger of finding their way to the cooking pot because they are beloved pets that will not be sacrificed to satisfy anyone’s craving for calderetang kambing or kilawen.

Our relationship with goats has always been the same since our childhood. While not averse to eating goat meat or chevon, the live animals that find their way into our home always reach their dotage as beloved pets. We grew up with an impressive menagerie of farm animals that our doctor mother got as gifts from grateful patients. Fortunately, this was during simpler times where we had a lot of space and people who could help us care for our many pets.

Of goat pets that lived with us in the past, the most loved was a buck called Cal. His real name was Calhoun but our father liked to tease us by saying that Cal actually short for caldereta and that the goat was meant for the cooking pot one day. Of course, we didn’t believe him and knew that he was also actually quite fond of the goat. Why else would he and our mother agree to have custom-made corduroy jackets made for Cal like we asked?

Cal was a favorite co-conspirator in many of our childhood pranks and kept us too busy from getting into more serious trouble. We knew soon enough that the expression “to get one’s goat” meant that we had annoyed someone again. Learning that the expression had origins in horse-racing where goats were kept in the stalls of skittish race horses to calm the latter down, we took this as another chance to beg for a pony, and beseeched our parents with a constant refrain, “But see? Goats and horses would be perfect companions. They could live together in the garage.”

Just as goats were kept with race horses to keep the latter calm, caring for our friendly and loyal goat was one channel to dissipate our occasionally disruptive and destructive childhood energies. “The bible says the sheep will be separated from the goats,” I seem to remember our long-suffering neighbors and relative intoning as they glared disapprovingly at us after we had been caught misbehaving again. But then the implication was lost on us as we continued our madcap capers. We are able to understand the innuendo only now that we are older. The thing was:  Goats were more interesting creatures. Lamb and sheep were needy creatures that bleated annoyingly and got disgustingly dirty matted coats. Goats on the contrast were independent, curious and funny animals that were able to amuse themselves on their own — very much like us at that stage of our lives.

Nowadays, it really is too bad that with cramped urban homes, not many kids are able to experience growing up with funny and intelligent farm animals as pets.