Way back when I ran out of goats to sell, I offered to sell a group my friend wanted to move. I never imagined it would turn me into some sort of local goat broker, but that's exactly what it did. It seems everyone now comes to me to unload their goats, or else looks me up to find what they want. I don't mind it really. I enjoy buying goats and as long as I use someone else's money to do so, my roommate stays off my case.

The current group of 27 goats was ready to ship out Saturday morning, and other than three does dropping three kids on me just days before they were due to travel, everything had been fairly uneventful. I was sitting smugly at my desk congratulating myself on getting such a large group together without any major hitches, and feeling quite professional. Everything was fine until I remembered something I'd forgotten to do that day.

In addition to the goats here, there is also a large population of chickens. Despite ordering hens only, the hatchery never fails to ship me one male for every two females. Now that everyone has grown up, the 5:30 am cacophony is ear splitting, as 18 roosters vie to be the loudest. In desperation, I'd offered to give the noisy little buggers away to anyone who wanted one. After weeks of begging total strangers to take them off my hands, I had finally found a sucker.... er, taker. Now, at 11:30 pm, I realized it was time to go rooster catching while they were sound asleep.

The roosters roosted in a tree at night, which meant I had to climb up the tree to catch them in the dark. In the dark one clucker looks like all the other cluckers, and my last trip up the tree resulted in my catching Ivan the Conqueror. Ivan is a massive Americauna rooster and not one I intended to get rid of. I didn't realize who I had though, until I was in the house looking for a kennel to put him in.

Since it was late, and I was tired, I decided to just stash him in the house and let him loose in the morning. After all, I certainly didn't want to clamber up the tree again to put him back. The bathroom seemed like an ideal chicken parking lot. I gently stuck Ivan in the window, turned the light off, and let him go back to sleep. I paused by my roommate's door to let her know Ivan in the bathroom and to shut the door if she used it, and then snuck off to bed before she could ask me to repeat myself.

At 7 am Ivan began announcing that the sun was up. After three crows I decided it was time he be relocated outside. As I staggered out into the early morning light, bathrobe clutched closed with one hand, angry rooster tucked under the other arm, I nearly bumped into someone on the porch. Confusion was gradually replaced with horror as I realized it was the hauler, come to pick up the goats. Stupidly I stood on the porch, blinking in the bright light, grasping for a way to explain why I just emerged from the house with a chicken. Alarm clock? Breakfast? So much for any shred of professionalism I'd managed to cultivate during my stint as a goat broker. Now all I needed to complete my image was curlers in my hair and a cigarette dangling from my lips. In an obvious effort to make a bad situation even worse, Ivan chose that moment to attempt an escape, requiring me to choose between hanging onto his flailing, flapping self or keeping my bathrobe closed. Embarrassed, I heaved Ivan out into the yard, mumbled something about it being early, and snuck back inside to put some clothes on, leaving the hauler on the porch to laugh himself into an early grave.

It's official now. I'm white trash.