I don’t think Cuzco could have survived without a bit of help from The Man Upstairs. The yard he ended up in was probably the only really safe one in the whole area. It was surrounded by a 6′ chain link fence with one gate (which happened to be open and he found it), and it was one of the only fenced houses where there was no dog. He could stay there safely, surrounded by a fence where no predators could get at him. There was a water barrel, a half acre or so of excellent browse, several lean-to’s and sheds to take shelter under or hide behind. I think he was ready to set up camp there for a long time if no one found him. And miraculously, the man who owned the place just “happened” to be going to a funeral where he met an old friend of his, my next-door neighbor, and told him the story of the goat on his porch at 4:00 in the morning. There are just too many “coincidences” in this story.

Anyway, Cuzco is eating now and feeling a bit better. His neck is still very stiff and sore. The swelling has gone down, but the muscles are hard as a rock. He can’t bend to the ground to eat and has to kneel or lay down. He also can’t swing at Nibbles, so she’s actually taken the upper hand in the pecking order for now. She chased him out of the shed last night, which looked ridiculous to say the least. But Cuzco eventually just went in there anyway and lay down with a “Yeah, what are you gonna do about it?” look on his face. He really hates her at the moment. But I tell him “what goes around comes around”. He gave my old horse, Easter, hell for years when he was a young goat. Now he gets to find out how it feels to be old and tired and pestered by a knee-high whippersnapper.

Since this is a “glamour shots” blog, I should probably post a photo in here somewhere. This is one of my favorites. It was taken a long time ago before Cuzco lost his horn. And no, I’m not making any sort of statement about where goats go after they die!

I got Cuzco cleaned up last night, and he clearly had a very narrow escape. It’s hard to tell from the photos because of all the hair, but he has bites on both sides of his neck, and the upper portion of it is swollen and obviously stiff and sore. He has a couple of shallow puncture wounds, but we’re on the third day out and there’s no pus or swelling or even oozing from them, so I don’t think he’ll need antibiotics. I’ll just keep them cleaned out with some iodine and I think he should be ok. I think his studded collar, of all things, helped protect his lower neck. There were no wounds down there, and some of the studs look a bit bashed up, so thank goodness for fancy collars with double rows of metal studs!

Cuzco is very lucky he didn’t lose his left eye. I saw first thing that he had a scrape under it along the lower eye socket. What I saw later when I was cleaning him up was that he had a corresponding wound on top of his head in the spot where the horn is missing. It looks to me like a coyote grabbed Cuzco’s head in his jaws, and the upper teeth took out a chunk of skin on top while the lower teeth put the gash just under the left eye. Both are quite shallow. The one on top took all the skin off so the bone is showing through right behind his scur, but it hardly bled and he can’t feel it at all. That was the spot where his horn was removed, so there were no muscles, nerves, or blood vessels under the skin… just bone.

He has numerous shallow bite marks along his back and sides but only one kind of nasty one. But it’s no worse than some of the ones I’ve seen my horse, Skokie, give him in the past. He also has some scrapes that I suspect are from running through a dozen or so barbed wire fences over three miles of countryside. But nothing serious. Mostly he just looks traumatized. He’s barely eating right now, but I suspect he’ll settle down over the next few days. Unfortunately, I have to chain him up because he already tried to run off to the neighbors’ this morning when I let him out of the pen. I suppose I could just keep him locked in the pen, but I’m hoping he’ll eat sooner if he has fresh browse instead of hay. So he’ll stay on the tether until he starts feeling at home here again. He’s so jumpy, I’m afraid anything could set him running for the woods if he’s not restrained.

I’m just so glad he’s ok. I was praying I’d find his body. I never expected we’d find him alive, especially so far from home after two days and two nights!

Thanks for your prayers, guys. God DID pull a miracle out of the hat! Praise the Lord!

I spent about four hours this morning on horseback looking for Cuzco’s body among our scrub oak and on the empty 100 or so acres south of us where no one lives. All I scared up was a big bear, which didn’t raise my hopes any. I kept scanning the skies for buzzards, but only saw a couple of fly-overs. I gave up and came home around noon and was having a good cry with Nibbles in my lap when we got a phone call. Our neighbor who has the horses said he’d met someone who had been woken up at 4:00 this morning by a huge one-horned goat on his porch. His house is in a heavily wooded neighborhood a good three miles away!

Naturally, we drove straight over, but we couldn’t find Cuzco anywhere. There are many little roads and houses in that area, all thickly wooded and covered in scrub oak, so it’s impossible to see very far. Also, practically everyone has dogs, so I was afraid that Cuzco may have been chased who knows how far since 4 a.m. When we didn’t see him, we went home and I got back on my horse while Phil posted fliers all over town. I rode up and down that road and many of the surrounding roads calling him and checking in every yard and pasture that had horses. I hoped he would see and/or hear my horse and come out if he were hiding.

After several hours without luck I decided it was no use so I turned for home. I went one last time past the house where he had been seen that morning, calling as I passed, and suddenly there was a faint “Baa-aa-aa” from the bushes. Now mind you, I’d been hearing “Baa-aa-aa’s” from every bush along every road I’d traveled that afternoon, so I wasn’t convinced right away. Nevertheless, I turned round and called a couple more times and suddenly a white face peeked out at me from behind the scrub oak.

He’d been hiding back there on that same property the whole time, too traumatized to come out I guess. He’s a little bit beat up. There are some bites on his neck and a pretty nasty scrape down his back where it looks like teeth tried to dig in. It definitely wasn’t a bear. I’m thinking it was the coyotes we heard that night. Cuzco is pretty independent and likes to go out in the fields near our house, but it was a bad night to be out, what with too many coyotes and no horses at home. I don’t think he was protecting Nibbles. She’s just a homebody and always stays in the pen at night. Cuzco feels it’s his privilege to come and go as he pleases and he picked the wrong night to go. I don’t care what he thinks about it, I’m keeping him locked in at night from now on–especially when I take the horses to saddle club! Right now he’s very jittery and wants to leave home. He’s one of those critters that feels vulnerable when he’s locked in, which of course is stupid to those of us who know that his enclosure is safe. But try telling that to a goat!

Anyway, thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers. It’s been a very harrowing two days. Cuzco was gone almost a full 48 hours, and I’ve barely slept or eaten during all that time. So I’d better get me some dinner!

Cuzco went missing last night sometime between 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. and I suspect the worst. I took the horses with me to saddle club and Phil was at youth group. When we got home, Cuzco was nowhere to be found. I didn’t worry about him… he often visits the neighbors’ horses if they venture close to our fence line and I just swing by and pick him up in the morning.

Well he wasn’t at the neighbors’ this morning and they said they’d had their horses down at the corral all night, so they would never even have come by our property at all. We had major coyote activity all around our house last night, and I fear that Cuzco wandered too far from home at a time when there were no horses in the pasture to protect him. We spent all day combing our property for any sign of him, but with all the oak brush, and acres upon acres of surrounding woods, it could be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Tomorrow I’m putting up “MISSING” posters around town in the slight chance that he followed some riders down the road or someone decided to “adopt” him, but I’m also going to be beating through the oak brush all day and scanning the skies for buzzards, seeking closure. I feel exhausted and numb at the moment. Nibbles stayed in the goat house all night and is fine. I don’t know what would have possessed Cuzco to wander away from home without the horses. He’s not usually that bold. He and Nibbles had just started sharing the shed together for the first time earlier that day, and I’d been watching them start to butt heads a little bit they way goats should do. I was so pleased. And now I’m devastated. But I’m also glad Nibbles didn’t follow him wherever he went.

If you think of us, we’d a appreciate a little prayer. Perhaps God will pull a miracle out of the hat for us.

I had my demo derby car out of the garage last week and Nibbles has decided she’s going to drive it in the next event!

What do you mean I’m not supposed to climb on cars!?

Actually, that’s why the demo car was out of the garage… I had a friend visiting from out of town. I positively assured her that goat hoofprints are the height of fashion, but she didn’t believe me. So her car went in the garage and my derby car was the new goat toy for a few days. Now all I have to do to find Nibbles is to follow the golden hoofprints.

Last week we had a church picnic, so I brought the goats. Cuzco and his cart were the attraction of the day. Nibbles was also a huge hit with the little kids since they had a friendly goat their own size to play with, but I didn’t get any pictures of her that day.

This guy was in the youth group last year, and he and Cuzco don’t get along. Matt’s terrified of Cuzco, and Cuzco knows it. His hackles go up every time he even hears Matt’s voice from a distance. Cuzco has even been known to chase Matt’s car out of our driveway! So on Sunday we finally gave Matt the upper hand by making Cuzco pull him around in the cart.

Michael was determined NOT to ride the goat cart. I guess he thought it wasn’t “cool” enough for him. Well we made him do it anyway (with much grumbling and complaining). I’ll bet he’s glad he did (although I’m sure he’ll never admit it to his dying day!). Looks like Cuzco wasn’t any happier to pull Michael than Michael was to be pulled. 

He had a better time pulling the pastor’s wife (and from the looks of it, so did she). 

While we were in Cuchara last week, a couple stopped us for photos and asked us if they could feature Phil and I and our goats in their Colorado tourism blog:

localtouristcolorado.com/2012/05/28/and-then-there-was-a-one-horned-goat/

Nibbles had us all in stitches. She kept standing on her hind legs and walking around, trying to sniff cameras and people. Cuzco is our prima donna. He sees a camera and expects the world to stop for him while he poses, shows off his best angles, and gives everyone that movie star look he’s famous for. He enjoys it even more if he creates a scene, blocks traffic, or attracts a crowd of onlookers. Sometimes he won’t move out of the road because someone is pointing a camera at him and he has to make sure they get a good shot. It would never do to end up on TMZ with the tagline “Cuzco has bad hair day!” or “Cuzco’s embarrassing public bathroom emergency!” or “Cuzco hung over!?” We all know how the media twists facts to attract viewers, and Cuzco isn’t going to be caught on camera looking anything less than glamorous!

Oh, and Cuzco was even coaxed into doing his tricks, but only after Tammy gave us a granola bar to bribe him. He was not content to let me break off pieces for him, however, and would not touch any of it until I offered him the entire bar, which he yanked out of the wrapper and ate in one bite. The bits I’d broken off for him were left unceremoniously on the ground. Nope, we can’t fool Cuzco. He knows when we’re holding out on him!

The day after our hike, we walked down to the local park and played on the kids toys. Nibbles loved climbing and going through tunnels, but she wasn’t sure about the slide. 

Even Cuzco got in on the action, although he had a hard time squeezing through the tunnel bit. He thought the view from the top was worth it, though. 

On Wednesday we took the goats out for a hike above Cuchara. It was an easy climb to a nice view of the valley. It had everything a goat could want–plenty of shade, a variety of delicious vegetation to snack on, rocks to climb, no water crossings, and there were no dogs on the trail that day.

Cuzco wanted so badly to hike in front of Nibbles, but she was always too quick for him. He would cut her off at every opportunity, but she would immediately sneak past him. She tried to sneak past me a few times as well, but she quickly learned that this wasn’t allowed, and I’m scarier and meaner than Cuzco when it comes to enforcing the pecking order!

When we got to the top, there was a little container for hikers to leave notes. It had notes dating back to 2009. Nibbles desperately wanted to erase the evidence that anyone had been there before her.

Nibbles looking noble:

The hike made a big loop that landed us two miles up the road from our cabin. Nibbles was getting pretty tired by this point, so I carried her part of the way home (for as long as she would let me).

Phil loves feeding Nibbles her evening bottle. She really ought to have been weaned by now, but she wasn’t, and we didn’t want to change her whole feeding routine during a move to a new home. Phil had never fed a baby goat before and was amused by her greediness and the lightning speed with which the milk disappeared.

Phil and I wanted to go on a vacation for our anniversary, and usually we go on a road trip. But this year Phil is too busy to leave home for very long, so we decided to take a short trip down to Cuchara (about an hour south of us). We only stayed two nights and we brought the goats with us to do a little hiking. It was nice to get away from home and away from the technology, even if only for a couple of days.

The goats rode in the bed of the pickup. I added sides because Nibbles doesn’t know about trucks and I didn’t want her trying to jump out. I tied both goats any time they were in there, and they seemed to do pretty well. Cuzco is cranky about his space, but Nibbles is fairly respectful of it, so it all worked out.

The goats stayed in the truck at night and we were able to park it right outside our hotel window so we could hear if anything went on. The first night I was worried about bears and the second night I was worried about rain, but we got neither bears nor rain, so it was all good.