Prose | Xu Jintao: Happy Goat

Happy goats

Photo/ Xu Jintao

In the 1980s, rural life was just getting better, and in order to increase family income, farmers often raised some livestock, such as chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, cattle and sheep.

As I remember, my rural hometown was the same, with sheep pens, chicken coops, pig pens, and cattle houses in the big yard. Looking back, it seems that I can still hear the morning chirping of roosters every morning, the gentle and moving chirping of goats, the lazy humming of old black pigs, and sometimes, meeting them and calling together, like a concert of various animals on the farm, adding infinite fun to my seemingly lonely childhood.

As the standard of living improved, the requirements for household hygiene increased, and then only cattle and sheep were left, and then only goats were left, and goats stayed with us the longest. Grandma always said that our domestic goats are rich, and there are a few sheep that do not waste leftovers, shabu-shabu water, and can also be fed and drunk. So, when Grandpa got older and didn't do farm work, he began to specially herd a few goats, raw lambs, income from sheep sales, and so on... This also added some fun to the old man, until the death of my grandfather a few years ago, our family did not raise goats, it should be decades, there have been a few goats to accompany us.

Rural children can hardly be idle, and in that era when productivity was not very developed, manpower was still very important. Children always have to help adults. Sheep herding should be a relatively easy job, and herding sheep with a group of friends is my favorite thing to do. Every weekend or holiday, especially summer vacation and wheat vacation, I will meet my friends, bring water, bring sweet potato slices, steamed buns, pickles, matches, catch up with a few of my own sheep, and merge into a large flock of sheep, and go to the river far from home to herd sheep. Catch grasshoppers, roast frogs, steal sweet potatoes, pluck peanuts, grill garlic, steal watermelons, etc. Under my leadership, my friends have done a lot of bad things, even driving the sheep to the cotton field, the wheat field to eat, eating early, and happily driving the sheep home.

Occasionally, when I go to herd sheep by myself, I am very lonely, and sometimes a person who is afraid of herding sheep by the big river is not willing to go far, but there is no good grass nearby, and when the sheep do not like to eat, they will run around.

On a hot summer afternoon, I didn't have a buddy appointment, and after waiting for the adults to leave the house in the afternoon in the hot sun, I hesitated to drive the sheep out. This time I did not go far, but to a forest behind the village, the small trees in the woods are not high, the goats love to climb high, love to eat young leaves, I climbed the tree and then hung the tree, wait for the sheep to eat, and then let go, continue to eat another tree, so that after eating a lot of tree leaves, is not to see the stomach bulging. I was a little discouraged, the sheep would bark when they didn't have enough to eat, and when I returned home, the adults would know and criticize me. If I can't herd the sheep, let me work in the field, and they know that I am most afraid of work, and I cry when I go to the field.

Suddenly I thought, every time I came home to drink sheep, I thought to myself, let it drink more water, the stomach will also be bigger, thinking of this, I jumped down from the tree, the little braid waving, put the sheep together, hurried to the house, along the way I was always worried about meeting acquaintances, they would ask, or would inform, saying that I came back early.

When I came to the house, the goats were still barking, and I knew that they were not full, thinking that they would be driven back and would not let them eat, so I said to the sheep, Wait, don't worry, let them drink.

I got two large buckets of water, scooped them up, and the sheep began to drink, and I watched triumphantly, listening to the sound of the goats grunting and drinking, thinking that this time the adults could not see it, and they would go out early tomorrow morning.

I was happy, the sheep were scattered, the sheep did not drink, I think how not to drink. I added something good to you, thinking that there was cornmeal in the dining room, I ran to the dining room, picked up a large bowl, filled it with cornmeal, poured it into the bucket, this time it really worked, the sheep drank happily, and when some sheep just didn't want to drink, I added cornmeal, so that I ran back and forth several times, got seven or eight bowls of cornmeal, and five or six sheep's stomachs bulged like leather balls. Well, at this point, I poured the unfinished water with cornmeal into the cow trough and mixed it with the grass to eliminate the evidence, haha.

I kept the sheep in the sheep pen, and I happily went to play with my friends, bragging to my friends, they all admired my ingenuity, admired me very much, and said that they would try it too, so that we would have more time to go to other people's orchards to steal apples, and we were very happy until it was almost time for dinner.

Maybe the sheep in the sheep pen that adults look at are lying on their stomachs, their stomachs are very large, they think they must be full of food, and no one asks me what to do, the next morning, I still have to go to the sheep early, to take advantage of the cool, the heat will come back. By then the grown-ups had already gone to the fields, and I think the sheep had drunk enough water yesterday and must be hungry now. When I opened the sheepfold door carelessly, I found something strange, before I came to open the door, the sheep all stood up at the moment of hula, because they knew that they were going to eat, and they were very excited about it. But today they're all lying there listlessly, looking powerless.

I shouted to drive the sheep up, and found that the original clean goats were all thin dung, and I naturally understood that it was the goats who drank too much water and collectively thinned ,。。 When I saw this situation, I did not panic, because I knew that the sheep ate too much, or drank too much, and when they were upset, like people, the second meal ate more dry food, drink less, I have seen other livestock in the family thin, and adults have done the same.

I contacted my sheep herding partners and asked them all to take steamed buns and pickles, buckets, fishing nets, and go to the river to catch fish at noon today, and not go home. In fact, I want the sheep to stay in the grass for a while longer, so that the feces on the sheep will dry up, so that the adults will not come back and ask. Besides, even if I asked, I would eat grass in the field. Of course, I got through this safely, and after a few days, the sheep also regained their former spirits.

After this incident, I never escaped laziness in herding sheep. Although this matter has only been fortunate to be expressed today and made public, the sheep who were already in heaven may have been relieved to be the original teenager. Through this incident, I realized that if I don't do things seriously, speculation can only be achieved quickly, and sometimes it will lead to great disasters. All things also have their laws of development, growth laws, there must be a process, and pulling up seedlings to promote growth can only harm others and harm themselves.

【About the author】Xu Jintao, male, born in 1976, from Dongchangfu District, Liaocheng City, has been engaged in foreign trade work for more than 20 years, runs his own fig farm in his spare time, loves his hometown land, loves labor, likes rural documentary literature, often writes and writes, records the life of the times, study experience, work and other beautiful bits, expressing his true feelings.