Dressing Up Goats, Cleaning Troughs

We decided to dress up Jo, one of the World’s Cutest Fainting Goats, as Batman for Halloween. Unfortunately it just didn’t work out all that well. The costume didn’t really fit right, the black cape blended in too much with the black areas on Jo, and all in all it was a Halloween fail. We always joke that Jo wants to be Batman for Halloween so we decided to make her wish a reality. She was pretty tolerant of actually wearing the costume aside from the head band with the batwings for her head. She shook and rubbed her head until that was around her neck. Of course since she already has long black ears that stick out to the side I guess she didn’t really need that part anyway.

If goats could talk . . . any suggestions as to what Jo is saying right now??

Total costume fail. The bat symbol wouldn’t lay flat on her chest.

More costume fail. The bat wings are around her neck and you can’t even see the yellow part of the belt. She was too fat and it is all under her stomach.

Yep, total failure. She looks like she has two sets of batwings in this picture between her ears and the wings around her neck.

We needed to clean the waterers again today. Jason announced that he was going to “make this easier.” I hate it when he says things like that as I know it is going to be a huge production and not feel any easier. He proceeded to collect a bunch of tools, some pipes (I was like WTF?? as he dug out the pipes) and then loaded the generator in the back of the truck. What went through my mind was “great, more ‘don’t try this at home’ activities.”

We went in the Big Boys’ pasture first. Apparently whomever installed the waterers used a product called loctite on the bolts. There have been many words used to describe loctite each time we’ve needed to clean the waterers and today was no exception. I’ve never heard of loctite before but I have now heard a litany of uncomplimentary things about it. Jason proceeds to get out some socket wrenches and the pipes and starts trying to loosen the bolts on the waterer so we can take the top off and clean it. He inserted the handles of the wrenches into the pipes so he could have more leverage when trying to loosen the bolts – so that is what the pipes were for!?

Jason getting his wrenches and pipes ready

wrenches inserted into pipes for leverage

I am instructed to hold the pipe/wrench on the bottom while Jason attempts to loosen the bolt from the top. I would never bet against Jason in an arm wrestling contest and I would always bet against myself. You can imagine how this went. Jason is putting everything he’s got into turning this wrench leveraged with the pipe. I’m trying to keep my end from moving. This resulted in my basically playing ring around the waterer as I hung onto my wrench/pipe while Jason outmuscled me and spun me around. This irritated him. I was accused of not trying very hard. Good thing he had plan B.

Plan B involved the generator and some rotary cutter thing. With an ugly look on his face and much muttering and shouting (I couldn’t hear him as the generator and the tool were making a lot of noise and I probably didn’t want to know what he was saying anyway) the sparks flew as he cut away. This plan worked as the bolts with loctite have now been cut into pieces and removed from the waterers and replaced with new bolts that don’t have any loctite on them. This should make for much easier cleaning in the future although it made things take forever this time around.