Eenie meenie meinie ....

Our young goats are approaching six months old and the two males, Lucky and Chocolate, are starting to put on some decent weight. You may recall that Lucky was born on Matthew's birthday and was instantly designated a family pet. That meant that Chocolate was destined to be part of my 100 meter diet.

Of course nothing is ever that simple.

Lucky has always been the good goat. He never participates in any of the shenanigans that Chocolate and Delilah do. He never once set foot on top of the hen house roof. Nor did he jump over the fence to eat the chicken's food. Like I said, Lucky is a good goat.


Chocolate has always been the heart stealer.

He has a beautiful soft brown coat, warm brown eyes and he always looks like he's smiling. His only fault is that he can't seem to resist following his sister's lead, Delilah, when she get's into trouble.

Delilah is the devious one. She's considerably smaller than the other two and she uses her size to her advantage to get into places she shouldn't be in. Most recently she's learned to run up the cross rails on the fence and jump out of the goat pen.

Luckily she's only done this when we're around to quickly put her back in the pen. Being a bit of a runt and a future source of milk means she's safe from the butcher.

The problem is that the family is divided on who should go to the butcher ... Chocolate or Lucky? Barb and Michael want to keep Chocolate instead of Lucky. Daniel's like Switzerland ... he's not going to choose sides. Myself, I wouldn't mind sending them both to the butcher but I'm only thinking with my stomach. In all honesty, if I had to pick one over the other I'd choose Chocolate to stay.

These are the dilemmas that you have to face when you're on the 100 meter diet.

In the end I'm going to support Matthew's choice to keep Lucky as planned. I don't believe it's a good life lesson to have him compromise his 'birthday bond' with Lucky. Lucky was, after all, his birthday present ... how could we take that away from him?

I have really enjoyed our dinner table debates over which goat we should keep. It reinforces the importance of being connected to the food we eat. How many people can actually say they LOVE the meat on their plate? We can.

Now Chocolate isn't leaving us for a couple more months at least and I promise you that he is going to remain a well loved and well pampered goat. I imagine we'll be talking about him for years to come because I suspect he's going to be one worth remembering.