Southwest Florida Gardening

Remember the lovely canopy we installed on our chicken coop? Well, Sunday it  “flew the coop”.

New Chicken House

It was a windy day with gusts nearly 30 mph and when I went out to gather eggs, I saw the canopy, belly up, legs sticking straight up into the air, lodged against the fence in our goat pasture.

My first thought was how funny it looked, kind of like a huge white beetle turned belly up with its legs sticking upward. And then the “oh shit” reality of it hit me. I called Dad to tell him about it and he said he’d be right over to help me move it, but that I could start taking off the legs until he got there. Remember, we put screws into every joint to make it more sturdy.
I got the drill and headed out… and then realized I didn’t need the phillips head screw bit. I needed a socket type thing to remove the screws we used. That meant walking back to the house. And back to the canopy. I finally got the legs removed and put them over by the chicken house. Still no sign of dad and it was going on 3:00 by then. I turned the canopy right side up (which, thinking about it after the fact was probably not the smartest thing to do) and proceeded to try to drag it over to the gate. Of course, the little stubs that the legs fit into kept snagging on the grass, making my job a lot more difficult. If I’d at least had it on its side, it might have slid easier. Maybe I would have shredded the canopy cloth, though. I don’t know. Anyway, I had it about half way to the gate when the goats noticed that I was in their pasture and came over to see what was going on. The girls all stayed a safe distance back from me and the White Beast, but Bo had to protect his ladies. I guess he was scared of the White Beast, too, and he decided I was a more viable target. He started with his best threatening tactics and I warded him off. I still had one of the legs in my hand at that point. I figured I had taken care of him so I put that leg with the others and then went back to dragging the thing.

And Bo came after me.

He’d rear up, tossing his horns and going through all the gestures that male goats do before an actual attack… and then he put his head down and just started walking toward me. He danced around a bit but kept forcing me to back up and wouldn’t let me get around him. Finally my heel caught and I fell flat on my back. He stood directly over me at that point, staring down into my face. I had visions of him tossing his head and tearing off the side of my face… or ripping my stomach out with those huge horns… or of him peeing on my face to mark me as his territory. He didn’t do any of the above, though, and finally backed up just enough so I could sit up. He wouldn’t move any further than that, and if I tried to move, he started threatening me again. There were no close neighbors in site, other than the one who was mowing his lawn. No point in yelling because he couldn’t have heard me. So, I started calling out to the two goats I thought might know their names, Pixie and Elfie. Pixie totally ignored me but Elfie apparently knew I wanted something, judging from the way she held her head to one side or the other whenever I called her name. I concentrated on calling her. I was hoping that if one of the girls came within Bo’s line of sight, he’d go to her and leave me alone. Well, Elfie’s solution was to sneak up behind him and then butt him right in his rear. It was a perfect goose, if ever I saw one. I’ve never ever seen a female goat do anything like that. The males think nothing of walking up behind a female, sticking their nose beneath her tail and either taking a good sniff or licking her. Elfie simply poked him HARD with her nose… and of course Bo reacted as anyone would with that kind of treatment. He whirled around in shock… and sure enough, when he saw Elfie, he became more interested in her. She waved her tail, held it high and then walked off toward the barn. She didn’t go all the way, but it was enough for me to be able to get up and out of the pasture. Bo charged full force just as I closed the gate. Thank God I wasn’t on the receiving end of that charge. He hit the gate which I hadn’t latched yet and it was all I could do to hold it closed. The bottom was tangled in some tall grass so it wasn’t going to move too easily but his strength was scary.

I went inside, sat down to catch my breath, and promptly had the first real asthmatic attack I’ve had in years.

Once I had caught my breath, I took some feed out to the barn and lured the goats inside. Then I closed the barn gate to keep them inside… and went back to work on rescuing my canopy. I got it through the gate and into the side pasture where it was safe from my small herd of attack goats.

The frame of the canopy was broken in three different spots so we’ll have to do some major work on it before we can put it back in place.

Before you wonder, let me say that the reason for all this hassle was because we hadn’t properly anchored the canopy. Okay, that’s not 100% accurate. We hadn’t anchored it at all. The plan was to set the legs in concrete but somewhere along the line, we got sidetracked and didn’t get that done.

The moral of this story is…. well, there is more than one moral.

• If you install something like a shade house, canopy or any other structure that can turn into a kite in a good wind, MAKE SURE YOU ANCHOR IT PROPERLY
• If you must work on strange things in a goat pasture, especially when the goats have horns, PEN THEM UP SAFELY AWAY FROM WHERE YOU ARE WORKING
• Remember that no matter how gentle you may think that male goat is under normal circumstances, HE WILL BECOME A DANGEROUS MONSTER IF HE FEELS HIS LADIES ARE THREATENED

The chickens? They just lined up along the fence and watched everything from a safe spot. I think they believe I’m their personal entertainment, in addition to being the automatic food dispenser. Life went on for them and their newly discovered egg laying ability wasn’t bothered in the least.