Yank on my Pickles, would ya?

Yesterday afternoon I came home from a little jaunt into town.  Pulled into the driveway, parked and started unloading packages.  Heard Pickles yelling in the background as usual.

Pickles yells when she's hungry.  Pickles yells when she wants "better" hay.

Pickles yells when a car pulls up the drive, when the sun shines, when it rains, when there's the slightest breeze, when a gnat lands on her ass.  Pickles just yells.  Constantly.

So hearing Pickles yelling wasn't anything unusual.  Except when I went out to say hello to the goat herd, Pickles wasn't coming around to yell in my ear.  But she was still yelling from somewhere.  It was in the mid-80's so the coolest spot in the goat yard is underneath the barn.  Everyone else had just come out from there, but she just kept on yelling.  I called to her, even tempting her with a handful of grain but she just wouldn't come out.

She was obviously stuck.  The barn is on a slope, so one end of the barn is 22" off the ground and the lower end is only 7" off the ground.  Pickles had somehow managed to wedge herself closer to the 7" side.

I came in to the house to tell Paul that Pickles was stuck.  His answer was to let her wiggle out herself; she got in there, she'd get out.  (I was secretly hoping that Paul would say, "Oh, ok, I'll go get her out right now, you just sit down and have a glass of sweet tea.")  So I waited about another half hour and went back to check on her.

Yep.  Still stuck.  And still yelling.  And there was an ominous looking storm cloud in the distance.  I figured if I didn't get her unstuck now, I'd be doing it during a downpour or at the least after the downpour when I'd be mucking around in poop soup.  I put on an old shirt and asked Paul to eventually follow me out to the barn in case I got stuck.

I found a somewhat clean tarp & shoved it under the barn, shimmied my just-barely-fit-under-there plumpness as close to Pickles as I could manage and was able to grab a front leg.  And of course, as any owner of livestock knows, if you want to have an animal go one way, it will instinctively go the opposite way.  I really needed her to lay down on her side so I could yank her out, but that is also another almost impossible feat.

But after a few minutes of swearing, wondering why I have stupid goats in the first place, getting dusty poopy dirt flung in my mouth, nose, eyes, ears and hair, I was able to "coax" Pickles' head down while simultaneously pulling on both front legs, and managed to get her to the point where she was able to wiggle out toward the higher side of the barn and get out.

She was a bit muddied and a little stiff legged, but other than that no worse for the wear.

And continued her yelling as I left the goat pen to take a shower.