“Let me go! Let me go!” It was a wail, a holler of complete distress. “Please, I beg of you, let me go!” No matter how much noise she made, the captor continued to pull and half drag the unfortunate Kitty across the field. “My poor little babe! What shall happen to Meringue?” One of the captors quickly showed the hollering goat doe her wee little lass. She continued to scream. The two terrorists did everything they could to quiet her down, but not even oats would work. 

“How dare you! You ...“she stammered, “I thought of all people you would be my friend. I trusted you.” The doe resisted being dragged further, but the humans were too strong. She demanded that they let her go, she pleaded for them to let her have rest, she groveled for them to bring her back to her pen, but the captors continued to ignore her cries.

They tied her up in a green pasture that was lacking a fence, that had trees and weeds and berries and so many other good things, but Kitty knew that all these were meant to torment her. Kitty knew that these two humans only wanted to keep her quiet long enough, so that no one would know her whereabouts. Kitty remembered that if you ever find yourself caught, you must make lots of noise. She did her best and let out a banshee cry. Then she paused for a second, getting ready to make another yell, but she heard her two captors talking quietly with each other. 

“I told you she would holler if you didn’t bring Maybelle along.”

“Yes, but you know how strong and smart Maybelle is, she would probably eat whatever we tied her to, and then we would have to catch her."

“Hmmm. Quite. That would be a bit of a problem then, if she escaped.”

“Exactly, you remember how much she hates being tied up.”

“Then do we let her scream?” The captor known as Farmer R. pointed to Kitty.

“I suppose that is the only thing for it, but I must say, I thought having Meringue beside her would calm her down a bit.”

“You thought, but it didn’t work.”

Kitty again let out a noise that would have startled a lion should one have heard her.

Now, the humans left. A short time later, one returned with a bucket of water, and showed Kitty that it did indeed contain water. “How dare you think that I am so simple that you could get away with poisoning my water?” she screamed again. “And how dare you kidnap the daughter of Queen Maybelle (for she is queen now after her coronation), and the granddaughter of the queen as well?” Then she said with an air of authority, “If you should but let me go, I am sure that my mother would be quite happy to pay the ransom.”

Farmer R. spoke up. “You think we are keeping you for ransom? Silly thing, I just brought you here so that you would have lots of fresh weeds and things to eat.”

A long and piercing shriek came out of Kitty. “How foolish you must think I am, if you suppose that I can be so easily tricked into thinking that I have not been kidnapped, when I have most certainly been treated with such discourtesy, that I realize can only mean that I have been kidnapped.”

Princess Kitty’s wails, cries, pleas, begs and all other manner of loud noises proceeded from deep within her vocal chords. Meringue at this point fell asleep to escape such awful sounds. She lay there curled in a ball on a fresh lot of soft grassy stuff dreaming about playing on pallets with Eclair. Farmer R. got up off her tuffet, a patch of grass at the base of a tree, and walked away.

Kitty rejoiced. Her walking away could only mean one thing. She was going to ask her mother to pay the ransom. She thought about this for a bit. After some calculating, she decided that she would probably be worth a hundred yellow flowers or fifty mouthfuls of barley. Her mother would easily be able to pay such a sum, because they keep a very full treasury of stores in case a disaster like this should occur. Soon Farmer R. returned. 

“Do I get to go free?” asked Kitty. “I am sure my mother wishes to have me released without further delay.” Without a word, Farmer R. plopped a chair on the ground and sat down. She placed a glass with water in a cup holder and pulled out three books. “Which would you prefer to hear?” Farmer R. asked. Kitty was determined not to be so easily won over, and sniffed at the three books and walked as far away as she could, but she was tied down, so she ended up only a hundred feet or so away.

Farmer R. poked Meringue and coaxed her into waking. Kitty saw her touching her child and panicked. Running back over to where Meringue was, she had to make sure that the petting and pats from Farmer R. left no mark or smell that could show, even to a very well trained nose, that a human had ever touched her precious Meringue. The human looked at the three books in her lap and decided to start reading aloud a hardcover book that had a wolf-looking thing on the front. She began, “The Call of the Wild by Jack London.”

Kitty wished she could cover her ears with her hoofs in the same way she saw the humans do with their hands, when they did not wish to hear something. She realized that this special ability belonged solely to humans (and something called a monkey). Thus, she had no choice but to listen to “And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born.” Kitty scowled, thinking how she used to live among the place that she was born. She thought, I never had to put up with being kidnapped and placed on a lead around super green grass. She took another look at the grass.

When she was quite certain that no human from near or afar was looking, she bit off a huge mouthful of delectable greens. Farmer R. had just finished a paragraph of the book, and looked to see if Meringue was enjoying the story. She saw Kitty eating the grass, and Kitty spat out the grass as though it were some foul, bitter thing. Her captor continued to read her story about a sweet dog changed by a series of actions, which finally led him to kill for his own food. She read “The End” and looked up. 

Looking at the sky, it was getting late. Kitty figured that Farmer R. would soon be making camp in a place where nobody would be able to find them. She was right. That human untied her and started to drag her around again. However, Kitty was not going anywhere without a fight. She sat down, so that she had to be practically carried for at least ten feet. Kitty finally managed to comprehend that she was beaten.

Therefore, she reluctantly followed Farmer R. There was not anything else for it. She was either going to get many grass stains on her beautiful coat or have a sore neck and head. Kitty had made up her mind that she did not like halters. The way that they were walking seemed familiar to Kitty, but she did not know where they were heading. It was a treacherous journey. They passed a wire that could fry a bug if it touched it, and the propane tank that looked like a beached whale. All these difficult obstacles were easy to avoid compared to THE SWAMP.

The swamp is a terrible evil that makes itself known after a rain storm. It is a low part in the cow pasture where water collects. Among the goats, they considered it something that you should avoid at all times. If you step in it, the drowned bugs of many years past will look up from the water and steal your soul. When this happens, you get a cold feeling on your hoof (or foot), as though you had stepped in snow. Right through this horrid swamp, Kitty, Meringue and their captors walked.

The stories they told before bed on a thundering night brought all their horror back to Kitty. She kept her eyes fixed closely upon the ground. This is why it was quite a surprise when she almost bumped into the gate to the goat pasture. “Mother! Mother!” Kitty cried. “I am here. Mother, turn around!” Maybelle turned around and bounded over to Kitty and Meringue. The gate was opened, and the goat family was reunited. 

THE END!

Everyone knows that chickens talk a lot. But most people don’t know what they are saying. I happen to be very fluent in Cluckish (the official language of chickens), so I am able to tell you something I heard the other day. It was late at night, and I heard lots of peeping coming from the coop. It was all the little chickies clamoring for their bedtime story.

“Please, can you tell the one about the Lost Egg?” one little voice cried.

And another said, “No, no, no, tell my favorite about the Masked Coon!”

Said a third, “Your favorite was told last time. I want to hear about the Red Light of Mraf!”

Then I heard a squawk from Uffie that really doesn’t have any word in English that its meaning corresponds to exactly, but it is generally agreed to imply “SHUSH!!” (Notice the double exclamation point.) There was absolute silence, for the chicks generally listen to Uffie, and all of them respect her immensely, especially after her recent promotion to Farm Mascot. She told them very clearly that she would tell them a story none of them had heard before, and that she would be grateful for no interruptions, because as no one had heard this particular story before, there was no need for anybody to speak while she was talking.

Here is the story she told:

“ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a royal family of goats. And all these goats lived in the same area. There were brothers and sisters, and cousins, and aunts and uncles, and mothers and fathers, and grandmothers and grandfathers, and all other relations that you could think of. And this family was very happy. They had humans who looked after them, feeding them hay and alfalfa, giving them fresh grass and weeds, and who were very good to them. Eventually though, there were so many relatives living in the same area that all of them couldn’t stay, so they began advertising around, looking for new accommodations.”

There was a shout, and one chick piped up, “Miss Uffie, what’s accommodations?”

Uffie grumbled, and said, “It means a home, a place to live, somewhere nice, like this coop.”

“Oooh,” the chick peeped, and an amazed wonderment went around the coop, with everyone wondering how Uffie could be so smart.

“Let me continue my story,” Uffie stated.

“So there were all these goats looking for a new place to live, because it was decided that only those who held the title of King or Queen could stay. Around this time, a vacancy opened up on a newly purchased farm, because one of the farmers couldn’t be happy with just chickens, and felt that she should branch out into a broader group of beasts. This person, we will call her Rosie, took a look at the goats, because the farmer who owned the land the goats lived on was her friend, and thought that she would like one of them. Then Farmer Rosie was worried that the single goat she had picked out would be lonely, and inquired about a friend for the goat.

“Farmer Rosie’s goat of choice was named Kitty. Kitty’s father, a King, was staying at the castle, and had to keep the kingdom running smoothly. Unfortuantely, Kitty had no brothers or sisters, and the only other goat realtive was her mother. Farmer Rosie, a humane farmer, thought the best thing would be for Kitty and her mother, Princess Maybelle, to stay together. One evening, Kitty and Maybelle said ‘Goodbye’ to all their friends and family, and stepped into Farmer Rosie’s personal carriage, and with much protest left the only home they had known.”

I heard a deep voice then speak, which was definitely Oreo’s, our rooster. He asked, “What model was it?”

Uffie, in her confusion, said, “The model of what? Farms don’t follow any particular formula.”

A sigh of disgust came from Oreo. “No, I didn’t mean that, I was curious what make was the carriage?”

Now, Uffie was no longer uncertain of herself and stated, “The best, it was a big, American-made, shiny, black truck with lots of horsepower.”

At this point I heard a low whistle break out of one of the hens, most likely Snowflake (as though she had never seen one or rode in one herself before, and as though it was a very impressive feat).

“If there will be no more questions, I shall continue,” Uffie remarked with a tone of slight annoyance.

“When they arrived at their new residence, it was night and they were tired, so the two goats slept. But in the morning the complaints began.

‘I liked the old fence, it was prettier.’

‘Our castle was nicer, this blue is hideous.’

‘How dare those humans think they can keep us in here.’

‘These oats taste funny.’

‘This water smells different.’

‘How do they ever expect us to sleep with all these cars going by?’

‘I don’t like these weeds.’

“And the biggest complaint of all, ‘It is not like how our old home was.’ So these goats found their opportunity to run away that very day. It was very fortunate for Farmer Rosie that the local farm dog found them and cornered them before they got too far away. So that night they were dragged, carried and pushed back to their new home, and locked in their ‘hideous blue’ house for the remainder of the night. In the morning, they were as grumpy as ever and began complaining how awful those humans were for locking them up. It seemed that for the first week all they did was complain.

“But something strange happened. The humans were persistent. Farmer Rosie petted them every day, and gave them oats in a magical purple bucket. Their blue cottage collected enough straw so that it began to feel cozy. Of course, the big change came when the grasses started to wither. Because then the humans didn’t just bring them oats, they also brought something better. It was the Mystical Grasses of Nom-Nom (also called Alfalfa by humans). These grasses are very special to goats, so the fact that Farmer Rosie brought some was considered a gift of a great price.

“By the time February rolled around, Kitty had really warmed up to Rosie. She would play with Rosie and follow her, so as you can understand they were really good friends. And one day when Farmer Rosie was heading up to play with the goats, she walked into the pen, and there was Kitty, but something strange had happened. It wasn’t just Kitty, it was Kitty with a little, fluffy, wet, white thing. At least that is what it looked like to an untrained eye, but my dear chicks, your Uffie isn’t an ordinary chicken, because I knew that it was (what is known as) a kid.

“So when Farmer Rosie managed to figure out what yours truly knew already, a huge smile began to spread across her face. I am telling you, if she smiled any wider her head would have fallen off. Then quick as lightning she ran back to the house, and returned with her human mom friend, and a red bag. When she reached the goat pen again, she walked over to the kid and wiped it off with a towel she pulled out of the red bag. And then she dipped the new princess’ (yes, it was a girl) hoofs in a special mixture that turned its feet yellow. Then Rosie petted Kitty and gave her a treat or two, then proceeded to pick up the baby.

“It did not take long for the new kid to have a name. She was given the name Meringue, due to the white color she had and the light hint of brown on her head that added a caramelized color. Meringue is a happy little goat, and is pampered every day. Farmer Rosie is so proud that you would think it was hers. And as far as I can tell, all the goats are going to live happily ever after. THE END.”

Oreo then asked for complete silence, because it was now dark, and thus past their bedtime. As everyone was closing their eyes to get to sleep, one small tired voice asked, “Will I ever see Meringue and Kitty?” Uffie replied, “All you have to do is look out across the field to where the sun sets, and you will see the blue cottage where they live. If you look close enough, you should see Princess Kitty and Meringue.”

As Uffie finished her story, I couldn’t help but smile to myself, because I had just seen Meringue myself, and I agreed on the pampered part. But I was also wondering how long until Maybelle has her baby. And what kind of story Uffie will tell about that. Then I finished up the chores (with my ‘human mom friend’) for the evening, and went inside to eat my dinner.