Did you ever read “Gregory the Terrible Eater.” I read it a few times when I was a wee child. A great picture-book by Mitchell Sharmat with really cool pictures by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey about this goat that eats a variety of terrible things that shouldn’t be food and eventually gets his act together and eats healthy food. Note to self: Use this when trying to teach my future child not to eat tires and rusted metal. This book was definitely a childhood favorite of mine, in addition to King Bidgood’s in the Bathroom and He Won’t Get Out, but that’s for a different blog. Needless to say, this book had a lasting impression on me, as my claim-to-fame in elementary school was my desire to eat anything at the lunch table. My specialty: napkins. I did not learn my lesson from Gregory. Note to self: Do not use this book when teaching my future child about eating habits.
My good friend and I have embarked on somewhat of an odyssey, a goat odyssey, if you will. The goal is to visit and partake in as many goat related things as possible. This all began with Goat Rock and has included good beer, good food, and soap.
Goat Rock is a rather large rock in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. My friend (who I’ll call Brian for the sake of anonymity) and I stumbled across it over the interwebs one afternoon and decided we should seek it out, since it showed up as an attraction in our area, even though we’d never been or heard about it. Pack five guys in a car and fast-forward to Goat Rock, at 42.0612 Latitude by -72.4326 Longitude. At the end of a cul-de-sac sat the Goat Rock in all of its majestic glory. The rock was an above average rock. A rock big enough to have a tiny trail up it, so almost like a hill, but very bare. Slightly slippery from the previous day’s rain, damp leaves clung to the rock adding a certain amount of difficulty to the trek up the craggy rock in Western Massachusetts. It was a successful journey, somewhat spiritual. This began our journey into the goat world. Think of this as the photo album that your Grandparents might have owned and passed down to you as some sort of bonding experience. You don’t really want to take it, because it’s just an album full of dead people and things that you’re Grandparents did 70 years ago, yet you feel obligated to take it and never throw it out, because you do not want to hurt their feelings, and you also take it because you figure it will be nice to have old pictures of your family to pass down their memories, even though it will simply sit in the attic in a box and gather dust.
I have a hobby. I like goats. I like looking at goats. I want to squeeze some goats until they bleed. I want to drink the blood that I squeeze out of the goats. I want to own some someday.
