Funny Farm

We spent a chunk of December 26th chasing goats, and dodging horse poop. Zedder was wildly adept at both. We visited my Aunt Cheryl's farm to meet up with some extended family and ended up snapping about a billion photos in the barns and paddocks of Cheryl's half organic, half manure filled world.



Zedder was entirely fearless, wandering through goat turf like she owned it. She herded the dozens of goats better than the dogs, and was easy to find. We just went in waht ever direction the goats were running from and there was Zed, grinning from ear to ear and jabbering on and on. She must have asked twenty-seven goats, "you want to play games with me?" Sadly, none of them answered. Fortunately one dog did...



...and at least one horse.



The farm trip was a hit of Rick Ruben proportions and Zed was wildly impressive with her absolutely unbridled enthusiasm and courage. She could have cared less that Kato the horse outweighed her by about a billion pounds, or that any one of the forty goats could have just knocked her head-first into bottomless puddles of poop. Nope, she just smiled and skipped through the frozen barnyard as though it was as familiar as her own backyard. She sat atop Kato as carelessly as the rocking chair in her room, only with a much wider grin.



She had a cast of six or seven hangers on doubled over with laughter as her barnyard tour progressed. She talked to goats, wandered beneath horses as though they couldn't ruin her day with a quick kick or startle. She begged friendship from chickens and tried to feed every living breathing thing handfuls of hay. She latched onto Aunt Cheryl as though they were long lost friends, and it didn't bother her one bit that it was absolutely frigid outside, and that the contours on the soles of her rubber boots were jam packed with poop. She was just happy to be hanging out with all those animals, and a pretty damn fun great Aunt.



It was a few hours of pretty exciting stuff and yet it still didn't manage to tire her out. In nearly two years she's only spontaneously fallen asleep without prompting or process on one occasion. The city streets of NYC couldn't do it. The beach couldn't do it. Christmas couldn't do it. Not even goats, horses and endless frigid excitement can do it. She's tireless, and that doesn't bode well for her parents.



I think trips to Aunt Cheryl's farm will be more frequent as the weather turns tolerable again, and I think it's pretty obvious that this little girl isn't going to be too scared of too much. That's both a good and a bad thing, I suppose. I guess it's up to us to teach her how to use all that energy for good instead of evil. Even that won't be too hard, I don't think.