Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Celebration Tree


Long, long ago in a land far away, there lived a farmer and his wife. The farmer’s wife gave birth to a son, and she planted a beautiful tree in celebration of his arrival. She also planted lots of lovely flowers around their house. The riot of color and the pleasing aromas gave the farmer’s wife much pleasure.

Alongside the farmer’s house ran a fencerow that was thick and overgrown with bushes and weeds. The farmer did not like this, so he built a small fence around it and bought some goats to clean it up. The goats ate and ate until the area was clean! The farmer was happy.

The goats were not happy, though. They had nothing good left to eat, and the farmer’s wife’s flowers began to look very delicious. One day the farmer’s wife looked outside, and the goats were eating her flowers! This was so long ago that there were no cell phones, so the farmer’s wife ran to the private radio and called the farmer. “You must come home,” she said. “The goats are eating my flowers!”

The farmer jumped off his tractor and came home very quickly. He caught the goats and put them back in the pen, and his wife was happy.

Until the next day, when the ravenous goats again decided to dine on her flowers. She called the farmer again, and he came and put the goats up, but not as quickly this time.

The next day, the farmer’s wife looked out the window, and what did she see? The biggest goat had broken down the celebration tree, and all the goats were eating the leaves! The farmer’s wife was VERY ANGRY. She called her husband again.

“Just shoot them!” the farmer said. Although the farmer’s wife usually had very good oral communication skills, in her anger she missed all the cues of verbal sarcasm. She went to the closet and got the .22 rifle, loaded it, and with three precision shots, took care of the goat problem herself.

She marched back to the radio. “It’s done,” she informed the farmer.

There was a long period of radio silence. “You shot them?” he asked.

“Yep.”

Silence again. “Well, I guess there’ll be a barbeque,” the farmer said.

For a long, long time afterwards, the old men who sit on benches in front of general stores would point at the farmer and say, “That’s the man whose wife shoots goats.”

3 comments:

lisa b said...

Did you really do this?

I am SO impressed! :-)

Stephanie said...

Yep. I did. And we've had no more goats since.

Courtney said...

Wow. That is all I can say!