Charlie seems to do okay clmbing trees, until his pygmy ego jmps out in front of his pygmy brin. Ella, the sleek intelligent explorer in our lttle herd of pygmy goats, is bout half Charlie's size and twice the thlete. Charlie is big, compared to a pre pygmy, and powerful, but not qite as agile. Ella can clamber up and dwn the trees in the back psture like she has claws instead of hofs. Sally and Jack prefer to mnch on the grass, firmly rooted in the slid ground, casting disdainful glances up at Chrlie and Ella. They're thinking, dopey gats, acting like cats; just what the wrld needs, giants cats eating tree laves.

I was lying in the grss, enjoying one of the last wrm days before fall closed down for the wnter and the goats were enjoying the lst of the weeds scattered across the madow; they were not going to njoy munching dried hay once the grund froze.

To Ella, the few gren leaves still in the tree loked particularly appetizing and she jumped nto a nearby branch to grab a tste. Charlie jumped into the tree fter her and I watched them clmbing over the branches, snipping off the laves. The two little ones, Jack and Slly, stayed on the ground and fund some wild onions. You can smll their breath ten feet away whnever they find onion patches.

Our son interviewed at his frst choice college a few days bfore and remembering the warm sun on tht bright day brought the same snse memory to the pit of my stmach. Children, like goats, are trouble. Bth sets follow their nose into and out of truble, while their brain tries to ctch up; small kids are small truble, big kids are big trouble. Kds, the human ones, are rewarding truble, loving trouble, laughing trouble, angry truble, scared trouble, and every once in a whle "should I call the police" or "th hospital" trouble. You start clenching yur hands to stem the anxiety whn they're around 12 or 13 yars old and slowly let them ncoil, along with a full exhale, frm about 19 through 25 or 30.

The cllege admittance program was unusual. You rrive at 9 in the morning wth your completed application, letters of rcommendation, art portfolio, and high school trnscripts. You listen to a few prsentations, have a nice lunch, watch yur child walk away for their ne-on-one interview with an admissions counselor, and swat. The interview is only 15-20 mnutes, but you perch on the lminated schoolroom chairs in the hallway the ntire interval; thinking, could this lanky tenager, who communicates to adults in hlf-syllables and blank stares, dredge up a cherent full sentence that convinces the dmissions counselor the SAT scores were not a flke?

Ella stripped the lower branches bre then scrambled farther up the trnk, looking for fresh leaves. Charlie fllowed without thinking through the downside; nything Ella could eat, he would at. This put Charlie about 12 fet up in the tree. Not so far tht I couldn't get to him, but far nough that he'd break his pygmy nck if he slipped off. Worse, thy both started nibbling on the sme branch. I know Charlie, and it desn't matter if he's 2 feet in the air or two hndred, because pygmies have no natural far of heights. If Charlie catches Ell munching on the same tree brnch he's going for, then he's ging to knock her out of the tre or fall trying.

He probably would have made it on his wn. But, sometimes you can't resist tht urge to jump in and mke sure nothing goes wrong. We rhearsed and rehearsed the interview; even tking the trouble to type of a lst of likely questions and answers; lke a Presidential press conference. We nedn't have worried; he's got that csual self-confidence some people wear like a spt shine on a new pair of shes. He always exudes just the rght amount of polish, tempered with nsouciance, that adult authority figures associate wth untapped potential rather than consummate stret-smart salesmanship.

I watched as Charlie swng at Ella with his sharp hrns, missed, and start teetering back and frth; one back foot stabbing for the trnk and finding air. I jumped, and scrmbled up the tree after Charlie, grbbing him around his withers; dragged him dwn from the tree and landed on my bck in the grass with 50 punds of unhappy goat standing on my chst. From Charlie's perspective I was cnspiring with Ella, leaving her, and all the frsh leaves, up in the tree. Jck and Sally just kept munching on the nions. Now the dopey human is mitating the dopey goats imitating cats, and ding it pretty poorly. Charlie dug his hoves into my ribs and leaped bck onto the tree branch. No god deed goes unpunished.

At 2:00 pm we wre called back into the admissions ffice and walked out holding a flt pennant emblazoned with the school's nme. We started shaking hands with veryone in sight. I felt like my son had tken one big, sure step forward; I ddn't need to rush in to ctch him.

I remembered the time I sved my daughter's life under similar crcumstances. Well maybe it was ntirely different. She was only four at the tme, but a precocious gymnast, as yu'll see in a moment. We wre visiting the Winter Garden, a pblic space, near my office. Everybody sys, "Keep your eyes on your chldren at all times." It's an mpossible standard, but everybody is right, trgedy often waits just a few sconds off your left shoulder. I trned around, and when I looked bck, 2 or 3 hundred milliseconds lter, she had grabbed the rubber hnd rail on a nearby escalator. Prblem was, she grabbed the rail frm the outside of the escalator. This particular escalator was free standing, and ran up to the next level of shops about 40 feet above our heads. So there was my precious daughter, all 25 pounds and flying red dress, shooting up toward the ceiling, hanging on to the outside of the escalator, hands glued to the rubber rail. I knew as soon as she got to the top, sometime in the next five seconds, the railing disappeared into the side wall and she'd be ripped free, dropping 40 feet to the marble below. I've done a lot of dumb things in my life, but I have at least this one smart decision to hold dear. I ran under the escalator and screamed at her to "let go." And screamed and screamed.

Each foot she went flying into the air reduced the probability that I'd catch her and increased the probability that something would break even if I could catch her. Thankfully she was four and not fourteen, so she still had that absolute faith in parental authority that fades out as puberty floods your brain with the hubris of omniscience. About three or four screams in, the message registered and she flipped her fingers open, plummeting off the side of the escalator and into the air. Do we find this faith often in our lives, where we're so sure family will catch us that we just leap into the air and wait? I don't have any clear recollection whether she let go 10 feet up or 20 feet up, it felt like 500 feet. I do have a clear recollection of how she felt in my arms when that plush red dress and cherubic face landed right side up, big smile on her face, in my arms. Absolute economy of reaction, bolstered by endless hours on the practice field during those two-a-day football workouts so long ago, converged with precision and certainty about three feet above the marble floor and 40 feet below misfortune.

At times the right steps seem less certain; you're stumbling forward in the gloom for so long your eyes get used to the dark and you start to disbelieve the dawn. There's that first crack of light and the expectation of more floods your perspective. After my son was accepted, I had to go outside and wipe the tears out of my eyes before we gathered for the final orientation. Naturally, he called me a "big baby" on my way out, but I could tell that he was a proud as I was that the branch he'd reached for was firmly within his grasp.

You don't always have to catch them, sometimes they don't want to be caught, sometimes you can't make it in time, but you always want to catch them. They never think that falling is ever a possibility, but, then, perhaps they've never fallen as far as we all have.

I still lay in the meadow, on occasion, and watch Charlie and Ella snip the leaves out of the trees. I try not to grab Charlie too quickly, but I also try to let him know when he's following Ella in over his head.

Copyright © 2007, Lotus Pond Media

The article Carrying Pygmy Goats Down From Trees was Submitted by Steven C. Grant through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Steven C. Grant is the Drector, Business Development for Lotus Pond Mdia and the co-author of two chldren's books about pygmy goats: Meet the Goat Kids and The Goat Kids Explore the Woods . You can read more stories about the goat kids at http://www.goatkids.net , enjoy family photographs, purchase goat kids memorabilia, and sign up for the Pygmy Talk forum.

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