WHAT THE NANNY GOAT TOLD HER KIDS (CHAPTER 1)

 

CHAPTER 1

 

WHAT PROVOKED THE WRATH of the nanny goat was the wife of its owner, Mrs Ransom, this fateful day. She had pointed disdainfully at her and asked her youngest daughter in a fit of anger if she wanted to be like the nanny goat’s teats giving milk only when repeatedly hit.

The nanny goat knew those words were directed at her. She had stayed that long in the pen and had curiously observed human actions, especially of Mr Ransom and his family, noting the words used in every act and milking (no pun intended) the meaning from them.

By her superior intelligence ... the she-goat I mean, and she would henceforth be called Grace. To her wretched owners, the christening would have been hilarious. They never dared to name their goats though not so with their dogs and by her superior intelligence, Grace thought that had happened because the dogs were too stupid to stay awake and bark nonsensically in the pretext of guarding them at the slightest shake of a blade of grass stirred in the dark by the breeze.

The Ransoms had two dogs, Muscle and Bone, and Grace had observed over the years their fates were not better than hers notwithstanding the fact they were eating from plates. But they shamelessly would pick the bones that came with their meat and roll them on the ground, and with their teeth make them crackle for hours on end, and this often grated on Grace’s nerves for one unmistakable fact: she at times had suspected some bones could be those of some missing billy goats.

Yes, the fate the dogs shared with Grace was the point she had kids and they too had had litters of puppies which often were cunningly removed from their presence and the nanny goat could vouch, just like her, the two dogs had little knowledge of their whereabouts.

So when Mrs Ransom pointed her youngest daughter to her and made that appalling statement, Grace thought it was high time for her to sensitize her two kids just gambolling innocently around about the intrigue in the pen in the Ransom’s compound. Then, she would show them the way out.

Grace’s anger was so great that she almost immediately bleated and gestured to her kids to draw close so she could peel the veil from their eyes and let them swiftly into the idea lurking in her head.

But cautiously she had thought again and then realized not to raise the Ransom’s eyebrows which would botch her scheme to send her kids onto the path of liberty, she resolved the best time to narrate her tale to them would be at night when the rope was off her neck and they were comfortably huddling together in the stall, the Ransoms had barricaded themselves deep in their comfy rooms and the dogs were out in the cold parading the precincts of the large compound, though Grace knew they often too strayed to scavenge in the nearby waste dump, returning quickly to wag their tails at Mr Ransom and his family as they woke in the morning.

Grace glanced suspiciously at the other six goats in the pen browsing the bale of leaves swinging on a rope between them. She was glad none read her mind.

She was somewhat irritated by the nuisance of the lone billy goat in the pen, sniffing, hissing and thumping the ground with its hoofs while attempting to mate with the nanny goats. He was on a long rope which enabled him to move from one end to the other of the pen.

Grace did not envy his seeming freedom because, for all the others she had known before him, they never lasted in the pen for more than a year, a period they would breed to increase the stock and enrich their owners and then later were sold to be meat for human plates in bars and during festivals and their bones after the dogs would unceremoniously roll in the dust.

Her kids were one female and one male and she would share her secret with both in the dead hours of the night and see how they could quickly save their necks before the Ransoms would think of tying them too to stakes in the pen. They were free to roam now because in their freedom they were chained to her milk. When they got acquainted with grass which abounds in the wild, the Ransoms would rope them to the stakes for they knew once the kids tasted and loved that, they might refuse to return to the pen.

Grace prayed for nightfall to set in motion something akin to a rebellion that could see future generations of goats on the path of real freedom.