One day I discovered that the last bucket of gleaned whole corn I had gathered at the granary by the railroad tracks had molded. I had forgotten to spread it out to dry. But I tested it on my Boer goats anyway.

I poured out a little and several interested nannies ran over to investigate. P-U!!! They blew and backed away and one snorted at me, "What do you think we are, pigs?"

So I gathered up the test piles and divided the spoiled corn into two buckets and my husband helped me tote them through the goat yard to the bare sides of the ravine above the spring-fed creek and there we scattered the corn. If any takes root, fine.

The herd of Boer nannies followed out of curiosity and when they saw what we did hurried to gather the scattered golden nuggets. The nanny who had snorted disgustedly at me snorted again saying, "Well, if you’re just going to throw it away, that’s different." Three days later there were just a couple handfuls of really moldy nuggets left behind in the crags of the ravine earth.

Several months later I picked up ten big pumpkins discarded from a local store after a holiday and placed them in a wagon outside in the goat yard. My husband broke two of them apart and left them on the ground for the Boer goats. A couple curious nannies sniffed and tasted the pieces but otherwise ignored them.

Two days later I gathered up the pieces discovering that almost all of the seeds and the pumpkin hair had been eaten, and the edges of the pieces had been nibbled. I cleaned off the remaining dirty hair and dirt, cut them up to bite-sized pieces, mixed it with dry corn kernels and distributed the bucketful into the nannies’ trough. Several of the nannies had followed and investigated, but showed little interest, snorting at me in disgust. I knew what they were saying.

The next day the trough was empty and I have noticed they are now helping themselves by breaking into the remaining pumpkins left in the wagon. Uh-huh, my Boer nannies are not, uh …. What was the word one of them said they weren’t?

Sharon Romberg