Goats Multiply
The first goat arrived on a Tuesday in the last week of April, in the back of a horse trailer belonging to a man named Duane who was very apologetic and a woman named Arlene who was not. The goat was a Nubian doe of middle years with one bent ear and a look of mild outrage, and she came with a card tied to her collar that read, in green gel pen, *For Margery. In gratitude. From your sister in Indiana.*
I had no sister in Indiana. I have one sister and she lives in Maine and she thinks goats are a species of horse that has fallen on hard times.
Duane and Arlene had driven the goat, whose name turned out to be Bernadette, from a farm in Rensselaer County, New York, on behalf of a woman in Fort Wayne who had found them on a ride-sharing app for livestock. The woman in Fort Wayne had paid them six hundred and forty dollars to deliver Bernadette to me. They had my address because the woman in Fort Wayne had posted to the Discord asking whether anyone had my address, and someone, and I would like very much to know who, had given it to her. Arlene handed me the card and a sheaf of vaccination records and the goat's lead rope and said, with the briskness of a woman who wanted to be back in Albany before dark, *Do you want her in the barn or the pasture.*
*I do not want her anywhere,* I said. *I do not want her.*
*Ma'am,* said Arlene, kindly, *I understand. But we're not taking her