On the Day of Atonement, two male goats would be used. By casting lots, the priest would choose one for an offering and the other to be set free. The first goat would be sacrificed and its blood sprinkled in the Holy Place to make atonement because of “the uncleannesses of the people of Israel.”

Well, actually getting my daughter’s goats, but therein lies the story.

For a long time now, my animal-loving, youngest daughter Celia has been asking me for goats. With some woods behind our house and a space opened up due to removing several dead oaks, she kept persisting. As I have chronicled on at least one occasion or two, she is hard for me to resist. But I tried, especially because I did not know a thing about goats.

When she left for school on her birthday last August hopeful a goat would be awaiting her when she returned home, I thought I had sent a clever message. For I delighted, as any dad would do with his humor, in having a stuffed goat tied up to the post by the door when she arrived that afternoon. She’s a good sport and laughed with me at the joke. But then a new look of determination could be seen in her eyes that startled me a bit. She knew she was wearing me down.

Years ago, when a friend from Ireland was staying with us, he saw the way my youngest had her dad wrapped around her little finger with her sweet smiles and impeccable logic. So he dubbed her “the Wee Wangler” for her cunning ways at bending me to her will, a nickname which has stuck despite her growing into a tall teenager. So, true to form, she figured out how to overcome my resistance. She started telling and showing me online how goats eat weeds and can clear forests.

As I have also chronicled here (with a telling premonition regarding goats), we have battled invasive weeds including poison ivy and especially bittersweet in our woods. Observable in part of the woods around us, the bittersweet ivy can grow up the trees and form huge, smothering ropes that eventually kill the host. Of course Celia kept using this angle on me regarding the goats, and others who I thought were friends would encourage her when they heard. “Yeah, why do all that hard work of pulling the vines?” they would say as they heard the Wee Wangler reminding me again. “Just get some goats and let them eat them.” Others started telling me how “easy” and “doable” it was with “just some electric fencing and a little shelter,” which she rejoiced in hearing.

So finally, I caved.

It’s amazing how you can go to Tractor Supply, stand there staring at fencing looking dumb because you have no idea know what you’re doing, and incredible mercy ministry appears out of nowhere. For if my goat story is anything, it is about how the Lord does send aid to the helpless.

My first trip to Tractor Supply, a 20 year-old girl was sent over to assist me, which I inwardly scoffed at. “What could she possibly know about fencing?” I thought as she walked up. But she had graduated from Celia’s Christian school and they knew each other, she owned and bred goats, and she schooled me on how to build an electric fence. She also mentioned she had two goats for sale, which, interestingly, Celia seemed to have known. Conspiracy? On my second trip to Trac. Supply, a young man reminded me that I would need a gate. Now, you might think this would have been obvious to me, but I was intent on the fencing. My third trip to T. Supply, an old farmer, seeing me standing there looking bewildered, asked me what I was doing. From him I learned what a T-post is and why I would need some beyond my plastic step-in posts (ask me sometime and I will tell you). My fourth trip to T.S., another worker tutored me on the workings of electric currents which I had forgotten from my high school physics class. Did you know that the animals receive the shock from the fence primarily from completing the circuit with their hoofs on the ground, as there is (an expensive) copper rod in the ground? Amazing! Well, I could keep telling you about all the TS trips, but you don’t have enough fingers to keep track and you’re getting the picture.

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