or the ram... Barry is an adolescent goat, friendly, curious, non thistle eating goat. He is friends with the large unco-operative ram called Lawn. Originally there were two of each of these animals (Barry & Larry, Lawn & Mower) but unfortunately one of each has passed on. Goats are very social animals and prefer company so Barry and Lawn have become besties, they have head butting tournaments and are never very far from each other.
There also used to be a bull, after demolishing the fences and damaging the air conditioners he became meat. Back to Barry and Lawn. These two are escape artists. Now you can imagine a goat climbing over around and through but a big fat ram? Well the children and I watched and watched but couldn't see where these two were getting out, but every day when we came home they would be happily eating the lawns around the house. One day the neighbour kindly ran some sheep in her next door field and Lawn couldn't stand it, he had to get closer and voila! The end of their wooden paddock fence butted up against a wire fence in a T intersection but the two were not attached to one another. So they had figured out how to push against the wire fence forcing it away from the wooden one and squeeze past the end wooden post.
So they have remained in their paddock for 3 days so far. Barry can still squeeze out between the wires on that fence into the neighbous paddock but he always comes back as Lawn is doomed to only one paddock as we have fixed the problem. Our fix was not a fancy one. We found a wooden gate in the grass and wedged it against the wooden fence pusing the wires to their limit. Now and then the neighbours horses lean on the wire fence to eat the grass on our side (always greener right) and end up pushing the gate back but overall it works.
We are however missing the sometimes 3 times daily efforts of herding a too smart goat and a recalcitrant ram back through an awkward gate from the lawn into their paddock. It was challenging and fun teamwork with lots or yelling, lots of laughs, lots of congratulations all round when done.
