Kids

 

Yesterday Toby was expressing great interest in something in our neighbour's garden so, trying to avoid trouble, I wandered over to have a look.  He was trying to climb over the fence to join K9 in his examination of one of the smallest kids I've ever seen, tiny and fluffy but with a voice out of all proportion to its size.  As K9 has been known to snack on such delicacies I decided that extraction was the best course of action and ended up bringing it across to our house. 
There was no mother goat in sight nor hearing but under a tree in the garden to our other side was what must have been the kid's brother, even more vociferous than my new little friend.  With Ruth's enthusiastic encouragement I collected him too.  We'd been hearing kids crying throughout the night and guessed that the mother had given birth then been frightened away by one of the many dogs that roam around the place as the kids couldn't have been more than twenty-four hours old.
What do you do with teeny tiny kids crying for their mother?   We tried feeding them milk from a teaspoon and they did take a little but things really took off once we borrowed a baby's bottle from a friend.  Meanwhile, Toby hadn't lost interest.  He was licking them even before they'd spilt milk all over themselves.  I think he wanted to adopt them too, they certainly started following him around.
In the end conscience got the better of me and I made enquiries in the police barracks as to whether anyone was expecting kids and hadn't got any.  One woman had been complaining to friends that her goat had gone out pregnant and come back with neither bump nor offspring.  I no longer had an excuse to keep "Bubble" and "Squeak" (yes, we'd already given them names: the boy was Squeak as he was by far the noisier). They were taken away amidst rejoicing but for Ruth and me, though we'd only cared for them a couple of hours, they left quite a gap.

Not all the creatures I encounter are as sweet as baby goats but at least if they die on the doorstep the ants will clear up.