Sometime later, my mother was performing her weekly chore of mowing the lawn with her John Deere. Zigzagging around in the summer heat, one hand occupied with the steering wheel, the other with a cold beer, she would draw straight, regular swaths across our rolling pastures. Earlier that week, Susan and Ed had decided to expand their menagerie through their purchase of a German Sheppard named Casey. It’s been said that animals resemble their owners, and Casey was no exception — the dog was quite dense.
Casey disregarded her owner and ran over to our property to bark at our horses and spread chaos. Ed clambered over the fence to retrieve his dog. He’d chase after the disobedient hound, but every time he came close to rounding her up my mother would pilot her riding mower between the two of them. Ed would get held up in traffic, Casey would pull farther away, and mom would reward herself with a chug.
This spectacle went on for nearly half an hour before Susan felt the need to help. She walked to the fence and prepared to climb it over to our side. Mother cranked the steering wheel, sped towards the fence, parked on the other side from Susan, stood high in the saddle, and sternly said, “Don’t you dare set foot on my property!”
Susan blanched and began, “How dare you take that tone with–”
Mother cut her off. “Don’t you lecture me! I’m a realtor and I know my rights. Set one foot over that fence and I’m calling the cops.” With great timing, my father stepped outside. Although he was some distance away, he witnessed these two women staring down one another. Susan turned to gaze towards my father, who returned the gesture by grinning, then demonstratively dialing the police on his cell phone. She climbed down from the fence and walked back to her house, and not for one second did she take her angry glare off my mother.
Somewhere down the line, my parents became visionaries by embracing Texas Hold ‘Em and hosting gambling night every Friday evening. All of our close friends would come over to play, drink, and smoke the night away. One night, a police cruiser drove up to the house. Two officers, a younger patrolman and his older partner, asked to speak to my mother.
Since our town was small enough that everyone knew just about everyone, we recognized the two. The younger cop also knew my mother and said to her in a friendly country drawl, “We’re reeeeeally sorry that we have to be here tonight, ma’am.” The officers were there because of the goat. It seems that Susan and Ed had grown tired of the goat trespassing upon their green pastures, and they had called the cops on us! Before the night was through, my mother was issued a citation for “animal at large,” one of the more obscure laws on the books.
And so began…The Goat Wars.