I am going to run off some "This End Up" labels to have on hand whenever Lee and I go out to work goats. Not to put on the goats, but for us so the goats will know which way to put us when they are through with us.

And, when I say "go work goats", I don’t mean hook them to a plow or have them drag in timber, I mean for us to go out and worm, give shots, you know, general doctoring stuff. That’s "working" goats.

During these sessions of worming goats and shots, it is highly unusual if Lee and I don’t go sailing through the air or trip, stumble and fall over something so simple as catching a goat or holding onto a goat or giving the medication.

I have always said that somewhere in the herd we have a Kung Fu master teaching the goats the art of self defense and making it look like an accident, a fluke, something that wouldn’t happen again in a million years. So far we are having way too many of these "flukes" and it’s really making me suspicious. As soon as I hear one "kee-aaaaa" out in the herd, that goat is gone.

Anyone who has watched or attended a karate or kung fu class knows what "kee-aaaaa" means. It’s something the karate students scream right before they attack. I think they are really saying "kill" in these classes, but with a foreign accent so it comes out sounding like "kee-aaaaaa".

Last week Lee and I decided to worm the main herd of does, and in order to keep things quiet and simple, we let them into our backyard to relax and graze. Things were working according to plan, us quietly catching them, worming, marking with a magic marker, turning loose, then on to the next goat and so on. We noticed the herd slowly migrating to the hilliest part of the backyard. We quietly went with them, doing our thing, and when Lee reached down to catch a girl who was perched on the edge of the bank, she did the fanciest side step I ever saw and slung Lee over the bank.

This girl couldn’t have weighed more the one hundred and sixty pounds and for her to toss big tall Lee over the bank with just one step, why it was just unheard of. Fortunately, Lee is athletic and he caught himself from falling by running down the bank. And, since our backyard is hillside, he couldn’t get his brakes on until he was almost to the back porch.

The suspicious part to all this is that the girl was very unperturbed about what she had just done and just kept on grazing. And, all the other girls never even blinked an eye as Lee went running at full speed past them. It was almost like they were thinking, "Yep, that was what our all wise Kung Fu master said would happen if we used that manuever".

Surely not, I thought. That couldn’t have been planned. So, I moved on to the next girl, a small yearling weighing a hundred pounds at most. I swiftly bent down and caught her neck and before I knew it, she took a quick step forwards and then to the side on that bank.

Why, it was like playing Crack The Whip and I was the tip of the whip part. I went flying over that bank and I’m not fast on my feet the way Lee is, but I am a fighter. The whole time half running and sailing through the air I was grabbing anything within reach to slow me down. We happened to be in the corner of the backyard where we had some barrels and neatly coiled black drainage pipe.

I grabbed hold of a barrel as I went swooping by to slow down my downhill acceleration. Well, it did slow me down a tad, but in the process it whipped me in another direction and I found myself running backwards down that bank. That didn’t last long. One my heels got stuck on a dirt clod and down I went.

Any other time I would have continued downhill, only backwards, doing backward flips, but fortunately for me, I sat down hard up against a large coiled pile of drainage pipe and that stopped my downhill journey. Rather abruptly and rather hard, I might add.

Lee saw all this on his walk back up the hill from his wild run. I’m sure, being the gentleman he is, that he was preparing to stop me from continuing on down the hill if the drainage pipe hadn’t, and with absolutely no thoughts of getting out of harm’s way.

The little girl that sent me flying over the hill was still peacefully grazing on the bank. Lee was able to catch her with no problems, while she wasn’t looking, and worm her and the same for the doe who had tossed him over the bank.

Until I do find that goat Kung Fu master in the herd that is teaching the goats defensive maneuvers, the only thing I can think to do is make those labels of Up and Down to tape to our foreheads . I am going to also put symbols of arrows pointing upward or downward to make sure the goats know which way to correctly put us. But, I am getting highly suspicious as to why they know how to read. I have seen them walk up to our bottle of wormer, stare hard at the label, and then take off. I think we have a goat English teacher out in the herd teaching them to read and to understand English. They act like they know too much what we are talking about while out in the herd. As soon as I see a goat standing in front of a chalk board with a piece of chalk in her mouth and a group of goats watching, she’s out of here, along with that Kung Fu master. THE END