Málaga rains

Málaga rains and Sally ushers the dogs into their blanketed, pillow-filled shelters under the tables outside. It is the first rain since we've been here and then some, and though it's not heavy it is continuous, hopefully filling up our several parched wells.

We have no fear, because Ryan has a new nickname. Even if the waters burst from the heavens, if the clouds that envelop our little abode in mist were to liquefy, we don't even need a life preserver because we know who Ryan is. After discussing celebrity lookalikes, how I get Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Carey and Ian gets Woody Allen for some reason, we now know why Ryan hangs around in a bathing suit, wants to go to EMT school, likes to speak in a German or Austrian accent, and probably conceals an innate desire to sing and dance. Ian points and exclaims: "You look like David Hasselhoff!"

The billys

The billy goats stink with the smell of a hormonal middle school boy. It’s a terrible smell, that thick smell of musk and something pungent that I can’t name in the goat world; in the middle school boy world is Axe. The only difference between the two worlds is that when goats cast such a scent to the four winds, the lady-goats pay attention, but when the middle school boy coats his pits, arms, and shirts in Axe or Tag, the avalanche of ladies that the commercials promise do not come, though they may see a few while their camp counselor puts them outside while they apply the stuff.

Most of the billys are dear, though I try not to touch them (or anything they’ve touched), lest I smell like them. Mancha and Solomon, who are so small that Phil has to get a stepping-box for them in breeding season, are in the same pen and wait for me, their front legs dangling over their pen, like old friends who don’t mind being close. Monty is big and stands on his pen across from the goatshed braying with what can only be, “Lady! Give me a lady!” Standing where he is, he is framed picturesquely by the Irish countryside.

Major, on the other hand, is a miserable old cuss. He charges at me every time I come into his pen, just to see if he can make me flinch. Phil curses at him. I choose to act like a basketball player who has just ripped someone’s shot: “And what, Major?! And what?!” Major may not be, but I think Monty is impressed.

In other news, Cork city is flooded with the heaviest rain in decades, which caused the River Lee to burst its banks. Businesses and the hospital are flooded, but we are on a hill, and it reminds me of growing up in Florida and barely escaping flood after flood after flood, the backyard filling up with water, hermit crabs, and – if we’re lucky – the American alligator.

The Goatman Cometh

Ryan joins Phil and Ben at the Cork Farmers’ Market, and it’s raining so hard homes are flooded; Ireland stays brilliant green. I’m back at the farm with Chris and the water pump which busted this morning, so we’re busy making sure all the animals have water. Sarah, the daughter, lives down the road and brings water buckets which we use until the evening when we fix it. In addition to cheese, those at the market bring jam and lemon curd from Sarah’s farm.

Then comes the horror. A goat pen is bedded with straw and, as nature takes its call, we tenders spread more clean straw on top of it. Ideally, the straw should be replaced rather often, and the dirty hay carted to our neighbor’s field, which he uses as fertilizer. Yet the weather has been so foul that the straw has been building up like an old city, layers on top of ruined layers, until it’s a fine, eighteen-inch tel with a goat on top. On the surface, it’s clean straw, but by the bottom it’s solid ammonia heavy and brown with goat urine.

We have done a stinky job, and there’s one more bed to do, but it’s done and needed desperately to be so, then Ben fixes the water pump. Huzzah.