Hippies Really Get My Goat

(I have just gotten off work, and as I’m riding my bike through the parking lot, I see a couple of hippies smoking on a grassy area with a dog on a leash. Being an animal lover, I veer over to say hi. As I get closer I realize the dog has horns, and hooves, and is actually a goat. Now, when I was very young, I lived basically in the middle of nowhere in a very small, very spread-out community. Some people had their own goats, but everyone else got their milk fresh from the local goat farmer, glass bottles and everything, and I’ve loved goats ever since. So, naturally, I’m even more interested now.)

Me: “Hi!”

Hippie Guy: “Hey!”

Me: “Cool goat!”

Hippie Girl: “Thanks!”

Me: “So, do you guys live around here?”

Hippie Girl: “We’re kind of traveling right now. Hitchhiking along, you know?”

Me: “Really? You’re hitchhiking with a goat?”

Hippie Guy: “Oh, yeah, totally. People give us rides all the time. They love the goat.”

Me: “That’s awesome. If I ever own my own place one day, I’d love to have a goat, for the milk.”

Hippie Guy: “Oh, yeah, that’s what we’re waiting for with this one!”

(I take a moment to stare at the goat, at the hippies, back at the goat, and at the goat’s testicles.)

Me: “…Right.”

(I have no idea if they’re messing with me or not, but after 8 hours selling burgers, I decide that I simply do not have the energy to deal with it either way, and say my polite goodbyes. Later, I call my mom and tell her about it.)

Mom: “Are you sure they weren’t udders? I mean, they’re set pretty far back there–”

Me: “No, mom, I know what udders look like. They’re a roundish fleshy thing with two teets and they hang between the thighs. These were two long oval furry things with a definite line in between, and they were hanging way farther back. They were testicles.”

(A few days later, I mention to my grandmother over dinner that I’d run into some people with a goat. She volunteers at the food bank.)

Grandmother: “Oh, yes, they came in the other day, and said they wanted to get milk from it!” *laughs* “But it was a billy goat!”

Me: “I know!” *we both laugh about it for a while*

Grandmother: “So, [Boss] took them aside and explained to them in no uncertain terms that they were NOT going to get milk from it.”

Me: “I wonder what their plan was to get it pregnant? Or did they think goats just start MAGICALLY producing milk for no reason?” *more laughter* “How did they even GET it without knowing what sex it was?”

Grandmother: “I’m afraid they might have stolen it.”

Me: “Ah…”

(Apparently they stuck in town living in a boat that had washed up during a recent storm. I saw them around town once after, their miniature goat stretched to his tippy toes on a tiny ledge of a pillar, eating the flowers from the hanging planters in front of a store. I call myself a hippie, but now when I recount the story to people, I refer to them as ‘the two stupidest hippies I’ve ever met.’)