“All happy goat farmers are alike; each unhappy goat farmer is unhappy in his own way.”
-Leo Tolstoy
Any goat farmer will know immediately what Tolstoy meant by this. There are a million different ways goats can escape, and only one way to keep them contained–an island. For my day job I cover 45 counties, roughly half of the state, and on multiple occasions I’ve heard tales of goat islands. Whether or not these tales are apocryphal, I can’t say, but I can say they share similar characteristics: 1) a farmer driven to madness by escaping goats 2) an ultimatum from a wife 3) a nearby lake or reservoir with a small wooded island in the middle of it 4) a rowboat or other small questionably seaworthy vessel, and 5) a midnight ferry operation.
At the end of the tale, the farmer finally sleeps soundly knowing his goats are safely contained on the island. Eventually, the farmer will return many months later to the island to find his goats have doubled or even tripled in size, and he is ecstatically happy. From this point onward, I have heard two versions of the tale, one in which the farmer successfully transports the fattened goats off the island to sell for top dollar, living happily ever after, and another in which the fattened goats swamp and sink the vessel, after which the goats swim to shore and escape while the farmer barely escapes with his life, which I find to be the more realistic version.
That cautionary version of the tale is the main reason why I haven’t transported our three goats to the island in our local reservoir. The island is about the size of two football fields, and full of briars and brambles, and I suspect it would be paradise for our three goats. But knowing my luck, if I tried something like that, the boat would sink on the way over, and somehow I would end up stranded on an island and the goats would escape.
Still, a goat farmer can dream.
