Backyard Bleating

My backyard is not landscaped at all.  Kevin, my roommate and landlord, isn’t interested in doing anything with it so it just sits there, growing weeds.  Since we live in the desert it’s mostly just dirt, but a large amount of grass has grown up around the edge of the porch.  Kevin cut it all down with a weed eater once, but then it grew back (as grass is wont to do).  The solution to growing grass?  Get a goat.

The offensively tall grass

Kevin's friend Luis recently bought a goat to eat the weeds in his backyard and keep the grass trimmed.  I’ve been to Luis’s house and the goat does a pretty stellar job.  The grass in our backyard has gotten pretty tall and Kevin didn’t want to cut it again so Luis offered to lend us his goat. 

I thought the whole idea of getting a goat was pretty silly since it would only take a few minutes to weed eat the grass, but I don’t own the house so I went along with it.  Once we got the goat, however, I was completely in favor of it.  Luis’s goat is a pygmy goat so he’s small, about the size of a dog, which makes him look very adorable.  I also enjoy looking out the kitchen window and watching him stare at me while he endlessly chews in a circular motion with grass hanging out of his mouth.  He really, really wants to come in the house and tries to follow us in every time we leave the backyard.  Yesterday after Kevin and I both came in he got up on his hind legs and started scratching at the doorknob.  My greatest fear is being realized, he’s learning how to open doors just like the raptors in Jurassic Park did. 

Here he is, eating the grass like a good little goat

He doesn't have a name, but I call him Plutarco
(it's an old Mexican name and it suits him)

The goat and I have become pretty good friends.  He spends all day alone in the backyard so I go out and pet him at least once a day.  He seems to really like me and follows me everywhere I go.  I exploit this for my own amusement.  Since I know he’s going to follow me I purposely walk over things that I know he’ll have to jump over because I like to see him jump.  A typical afternoon in the backyard includes me jumping over the tall grass, followed by the goat jumping over the grass, followed by me jumping back over the grass, followed by the goat jumping back over the grass, etc.  I wish I could say that we usually play this game until I get bored of it, but we usually play until the goat gets bored of it.

Just a friend coming to say hello

Today as I was trying to feed a handful of grass I had just picked to the goat, the thought came to my mind that my life is starting to resemble a foreign film.  The kind of movie where something quirky and unexpected happens to the protagonist, but there really is no story line or point to the film -- just a dude hanging out with a goat.

On a non-goat related note, we spent a few hours on Saturday "landscaping" the front yard with rocks.  Before the front yard had a wooden fence, a lot of dirt, and a fair number of weeds.  It reminded me of the wild west.  Now our yard is just rocks and while it looks cleaner, I can't help but think that it looks like a parking lot at corn maze.

Here's what the yard looked like before (looking from the porch)

Here's what it looks like now (looking from the street)