How I Never Learned The Four Step

There’s a new product on the shelf at our local grocery store. Goat Milk. It says so right on the side of the carton in big letters so no one can claim confusion when they try it later for breakfast and wonder why their cereal tastes funny. Goat milk isn’t like the stuff you get from cows. It tastes, well, goaty. I know. I used to have a goat when I was a kid (no pun intended) on the farm. And I had to milk it.

I got a goat because I thought they looked kind of neat with their floppy ears and small beard. My goat, though, had no interest in being a pet. It wanted to be a free range farm animal and although it had recently weaned a kid it had no interest in being milked.

Milking cows was fairly easy by comparison. You bring them into the barn, lock their heads between two sturdy staves and feed them some corn to keep them occupied while you grab a bucket and stool had have at it. Most cows you can milk in minutes.

Goats don’t work that way. For a reason I never understood you have to lift them onto a platform several feet off the ground. It was supposed to keep them calm while you milked them. It didn’t calm mine. It made her want to dance. The Irish River Dance people had nothing on my goat. She never left the platform but she had a four-step routine that made it hard to squeeze a teat and hit a bucket with a stream of milk. I mostly managed to lather the stage for her next number, which was often wilder than the initial warm-up she performed and by the end of her set I was exhausted.

I didn’t have much luck with the goat and never got enough milk from her to develop a taste for it. All I remember is that it tasted goaty. Somewhere, though, someone has learned to dance with a goat well enough to fill cartons with goat milk. They’re selling it at the local store. I’m going to pass on it.