Ever notice how baby goats can be so full of happy life? They are just down right joyful. The ones I am thinking of at this moment are my 3-4 month old little girls. Their eyes just snap. Their little bodies just vibrate with excitement and then zoom, they are off, either bouncing, running or jumping over or on anything. Then back they come again to make sure you see their pure joy at being able to do this. There is no way you can be sad with such happy little squirts around.

The other day I went down to open the little girls pen up so they could go graze on the hillside. All of our goats are penned at night with their livestock guard dogs. Coyotes being the biggest problem, it’s just a necessary thing. We don’t even have to call the goats in from each pasture to get penned in the evening. They put themselves up. We just have to shut the gates. They know it’s not safe out there at night.

This one particular morning was cool and crisp. The baby girls were wound up and ready to go. As soon as I opened the gate, they shot out of there like little rockets. Lee had parked his wood wagon in their field and he had temporarily put two truck bed liners on it that we had used to cover round bales. They were overturned, making the wood wagon look like it was wearing a cap. A nice big hidey hole with the back end open for happy baby girls.

A new play toy, the girls almost shouted. That Lee is wonderful, they hollered gleefully. Forty little girls circled the wagon, thinking what was going to be the fun thing to do first. Several jumped up into the wagon and hunkered down to snoop under the truck bed liners, enjoying their new hidey hole.

Then one of the little girls got the idea to climb up on top the truck bed liners. It made the grandest table to tap dance on. Wonderful! The rest of the girls lined up to watch, entranced for just a second. Then they all wanted to do it!

Ten girls were able to fit on top, to tap dance and show off to the world. Another twenty circled the wagon at full speed shouting, "Me next! Me next!" Ten got so wound up that they ran back to their pen and circled their run-in shed, leaping over the over turned old bathtubs we have for them to play on, just flying and yelling at the top of their lungs. They were so excited.

The girls on the wood wagon thought it was a great place to play King of the Mountain and were busy butting each other off, in between tap dancing routines. This let new girls jump up and try it out. Somehow, they never just fell off the wood wagon, they leaped off with great exhilaration, never mind that the top of the wood wagon with its cap was at least five foot off the ground. The girls decided that not only could they leap, but they could fly. Wonderful!

And, just to add to the wonderfulness of it all, the cap made noise. With all those little feet hitting the top, it sounded like rolls and rolls of thunder moving across the valley. Fantastic! The little girls shouted. We get to make noise too! Isn’t life grand?!

With great endurance, they played a good while, particularly for baby goats with short attention spans. Finally, one girl reigned King, after butting everyone else off. She was alone on top of her mountain. Yay, yay, she shouted, until she noticed that the others had moved off. They had discovered the creek bank! Whoopee! They shouted.

Now, they had played on the creek bank before, but they had forgotten it and just how much fun it was too. Oh, boy! They ran along the bank, leaping over narrow places to the other side of the creek. A few got so wound up and excited, they plowed through the water, scaring themselves for a moment, but only a moment, because there was neat things to do on the other side of the creek.

"Wait a minute!" King of the Mountain baby doe shouts. "Don’t leave me! You are suppose to stay and admire me! Hey! That looks like fun!" And, with a mighty leap, she was beside her buddies, racing along the bank, bouncing across the rocks.

Good ol’ baby goats, no doom and gloom around them when they feel good and see wonderful things in their field to play with. Even if they don’t have things to play with, they make up their own game of bucking and running. All you can say about them is, joyful, thy name is baby goat.