This past week I have come to believe that my goats consider me a "blonde" goat farmer. I know I am mainly gray now with a few strands of the blonde stuff blending in, but basically my goats consider me a blonde. You remember the blonde jokes: A blonde calls up 911 to say her house was on fire. The 911 operator asks how to get there. The blonde answers, "Why, in that big red truck, silly." Or, how about the blonde state patrol officer who stops a blonde speeder. The blonde state patrol officer asks the blonde speeder for some ID. The speeder takes out her compact mirror, looks in it and say, "Yes, this is me," and hands it over to the blonde state patrol officer who looks in the mirror and says, "Oh, I am so sorry. I didn't realize you were a patrol officer too. I'll give you a warning this time."

So, what makes me think my goats don't take me seriously? What made me even notice this? This past week Lee had to have some intensive knee surgery done, leaving him out of goat chores for at least six weeks. This leaves me by myself to not only feed and water over one hundred head of goats, but also, by myself, doctor or worm any that need it.

Usually Lee is my goat holder and I'm the one that doctors. If I walk among the different herds, they usually don't pay attention to me floating around, checking them. But, if Lee appears with me, they pay close attention to Lee. Lee is crafty and between the two of us, we can usually catch any goat out in the field with very little problems.

To the goats, Lee is "The Terminator". He will somehow catch them when they least expect it. And, the goats take him very seriously. Me, I'm the blonde. The one who floats around and says happily, "How's my babies? How's my beautiful girls today?" and airily pats or hugs any goat that lets me and most the herd comes for attention.

And, because they consider me a blonde, it has made my life very easy this week in the doctoring and worming department. They don't expect me to do this by myself. I float by talking to my wonderful babies, wrap an arm around a neck and before they know what happened, they had been wormed.

I did have one blonde moment at the beginning of the week. I noticed one of our older, heavier, weighing in easily at two hundred pounds, does with diarrhea. I picked up a paste wormer, stuck it in my back pocket, and floated on out to her, saying inane sweet things to the herd in general. She tended to be a flighty, wildish gal, but when she saw just me and no Terminator Lee, she just continued standing there dozing, waiting for me to float on by. Without thinking what I was doing and totally forgetting I had learned years ago to not do this to a full grown goat, I threw a leg across her neck and used my legs like a squeeze chute to hold her stationary. I do this all the time with small kids when I need to doctor them.

Basically, her eyes suddenly bugged out and she said, "What?!!" (in goat language, of course). And, she was off like a shot. That was when my eyes bugged out and I had one wild rodeo ride across the field before I dug my heels in and stopped her. Really the only reason she stopped is we had come up to the electric fence. Before she could think to duck sideways and continue my rodeo ride, I hurriedly wormed her, said some very sweet blonde things to her, and quickly dismounted from her neck.

It's now been nine days since Lee's knee surgery and I'm starting to notice a new look in the herd. When I float now through them, saying sweet blonde things to my darling goats in a sing song voice, they are more alert, watching me like a hawk. I hear mutterings now of that blonde being a wolf in disguise. It's not quite as easy to float up to them to check them over if I see something wrong.

Fortunately for me, some of my goats act like blonde goats. They have totally forgot what I can be capable of and will still actually come up to me for a hugging or a petting, even if I have doctored them recently. I make a mental note to keep these "blonde" girls and to notice if this trait is passed on to their kids for future replacement does.

So, Lee's recuperation continues and I'm still trying to keep my blonde camouflage going until I have my Terminator back. Until then, have you heard the one about the blonde following a truck in West Virginia in the middle of winter? She honks her horn at the truck driver who politely stops to see what the problem is. She hurries up to the truck, looks up at him and tells him he is losing part of his load. He thanks her and starts up again. After several more yards, the blonde frantically honks at him again. Once again he politely stops and she hurries up to the truck door and informs him he is still losing his load. He thanks her again and continues on. A third time the blonde honks frantically at him and he stops again. She runs up to say that the load was still falling out.

He patiently explains to her, "Lady, this is West Virginia, it's the middle of winter, and it is snowing. I'm a state road salt truck driver."