Wow, has it really been that long since I posted? Have to remedy that, I guess, get back in the groove of posting.
First of all, posting to a journal seems like really intense navel gazing and while I’ve got a great navel, it doesn’t actually do much but just sit there.
Secondly, I frequently feel like the cop stories I have are pretty much only interesting to me and other coppers. Yeah, some of the stories are cool to regular people, but only other cops really understand the punchline, “Well, the license plate was covered.”
See, you’re not laughing.
I do have a really great GREAT story to tell, but I have to wait a bit longer to see how the court part of it shakes out.
For now, how about this: remember a while back I stood toe to toe with some precooked barbeque? Three in the morning and I faced off with a giant slab of loose beef?
Well, let me tell you, goats are much easier to herd than cows.
I got this call about ten minutes before I get off, lady complaining about her neighbor’s goats…again. Seems the little grass munchers frequently get out and the woman is tired of her rhododendrons getting eaten.
So I head out, thinking, “how am I going to write up this overtime?” I can put, “herding goats,” I guess, but I’m not sure how my sergeant will take that.
I get there, figuring the goats are probably already gone and there were probably only two or three. No, hell no, there are SEVEN and they’re still there, some of them standing on their hind legs (reminded me of ANIMAL FARM) and eating the leaves off the trees.
The flowers? Forget about them, they were history. Most of the bushes? Ditto history. Not much left but the trees.
She gives me her complaint – not that she has to explain much, they are smacking their gobstoppers as she talks to me – and I go to the neighbors to get them to get their goats.
Who comes out? The lady of the house. Mid 40s…crippled! She’s got a cane and a golf cart, for cripes’ sake.
A cane!
And this is who I expect to round up the goats.
“They’re my sons,” she says.
(Actually, that would be “They’re my son’s,” wouldn’t it? Although it’s sort of funny the way I originally wrote it)
“Well, your son’s goats are eating the neighbor out of house and home.”
“They don’t eat wood,” she says.
“Uh…right. Okay, eating her out of flora and fauna. You have to do something.”
“We’re trying, but they’re jumping over the fence.”
“So they’re Billy Gruff versions of Michael Jordan.”
She frowns. “What?”
“That’s a six foot fence…except where the hole is, it’s a little shorter there. Must play basketball to jump that well.”
“My son’s not home right now. We’ll get them when he gets home.”
“Which is?”
“Tuesday.”
This happened last Thursday.
“Uh…no. Right now. Call someone, do something. Otherwise, I’m going to have to cite you.”
Now, normally, I’m not such a hardass, but this was the fifth or sixth time we had been called and the flowerless lady said it had been going on for two years and she’d tried to handle it herself but just got tired of it.
“And what am I supposed to do?” she asks, waving the cane.
I shrugged but knew that somehow…somehow…the answer was going to involve me. And it did. Walking through the yard and bushes, clapping my hands and saying things like “he-yaa,” and “git on home,” and “bushwa,” and who knows what else, helping her get her son’s goats home.
And, as if by magic, they moved. Not like that cow, which just stared at me and dared me to do something. These little fuckers took off, running across the street, darting up and down the rolling hills, and – swear to all that’s holy – jumping that six foot fence.
And one of them had his tongue hanging out just like Michael Jordan.
