Donovan Kelly

Judy was special. She got me out of Latin class. To this day there are Latin verbs whose past perfect tenses I do not know because of Judy.

On the downside, Judy smelled like a goat. Her excuse was that she was a goat.

She joined our family because in the 1950's our father was a pioneer in the field of multi-tasking and Judy had a reputation for chewing grass and producing milk at the same time. Dad envisioned a lawn that would never again need to be mowed by man while his five hungry children drank free goat's milk.

Dad had only one test group for his great ideas, and we were it. “OK, kids, this will be fun,” Dad would say. Ignoring our groans, he might explain, “You can each pull weeds in your very own row of lima beans. When you find a stone, throw it at that can on a stick. First one to knock the can off the stick gets to stop weeding and to take a load of stones to the driveway.” Second prize was probably two loads of stones.

Maybe with some prior testing of his ideas, Dad would have discovered sooner that Judy liked to eat fruit trees much more than grass and that nobody in his family, including himself, was willing to drink milk that smelled goatish. As for lima beans, Dad could make us weed them, but he couldn't make us eat them.

Judy yearned to run free and often did. For unstated personal reasons, Mom wouldn't interfere in the bliss of a free ranging goat with horns. Instead she would call me out of school to come tie up the goat. Judy's timing was good and she repeatedly got me out of Latin class. Which is why I can't even say “tempus goatus fugit fasterus.”

Like my other siblings, goats required constant cleaning up after. The best of Judy's droppings looked a lot like licorice jelly beans. We soon tired of putting them in each other's Easter basket. Instead, we palmed them off as “goat eggs” to more citified friends. “Just carry these goat eggs in your pocket and keep them warm for five days and you can have your very own baby goat!” The world began to smell more like Judy.

If only we had added a warning about not leaving the eggs in your pocket when your mother does laundry. Maybe then the bottom would not have fallen out of the goat egg market so quickly. Sic transit gloria mundi goati eggus.