If anyone wondered whether animals grieve… they do.

I am from Boston. I didn’t think I could survive one more New England winter, so five years ago I put my dog in the back seat of my car and drove south. Explored various places—Wilmington NC, New Orleans, Austin TX. No place quite felt like home. Then in the middle of my travels, one of my films was accepted into the Santa Fe Film Festival. I flew out for the festival in December. It was cold. There was snow on the ground. But I fell in love with New Mexico and ended up moving to Santa Fe. Go figure.

Yasmina (left) and Joey

Bought a house down the end of a dirt road. And for some strange reason, last summer, I got myself goats. Really don’t know why, just did. Two five-month old sisters I named “Joey” and “Yasmina”—both Nigerian dwarfs. A month later I bought a three-year-old LaMancha, a breed of goat with no ears. Well, they have ears, in that they can hear, but the ears are tiny little things. (Everyone always asks, “What happened to her ears?”)

Baraka

Because she is all black with a bit of brown and white, I named her “Baraka,” after our soon-to-be president-elect.

It was fall and I wanted to get them all pregnant so I could milk them after they had their babies. I have no idea why I wanted to do this, either—I don’t even drink milk. I borrowed Johnny the buck to do the deed. I got him from a breeder I affectionately call my “goat guru.” (She said to me, “You don’t want to have three pregnant does at the same time!” To which she added, “Oh, yes, ignorance is bliss.” And finally, “Keep him until he nails them all!”)

I let Johnny out of my car and he immediately ran over to Baraka, who was “in season.” (How you know a doe is in season is by the way she wags her tail quickly and acts a bit goofy, making noises, rubbing up against the house, and being uncharacteristically agitated.)

Johnny

It almost never rains in New Mexico, but on this particular day it poured. Goats hate water, so they all ran into the very tiny barn. Because he is also a Nigerian Dwarf and small, and Baraka is a bigger breed, Johnny needed some help. My goat guru had advised that I might want to put Johnny on a bale of hay to give him a little leverage. So, in the pouring rain, I managed to throw a bale of hay into the barn. If you have ever wondered which is the stronger drive, food or sex… they all stopped what they were doing and began to munch. I later found out that it was supposed to be a bale of straw, not hay. Beginner’s mistake.

Johnny seemed to lose interest in my girls after a few weeks. I returned him to my goat guru and then eagerly awaited signs of pregnancy. I watched them get fatter and fatter and fatter. Johnny, the stud, had done his job.

One afternoon five months later (the gestation period for goats) I heard this high-pitched b-l-e-a-t, a sound I had never heard before. I ran out to the barn. Baraka was standing there with three kids, all girls! This was her third “freshening.” She was a pro. Baraka licked the afterbirth off her kids and licked me too in the process. One of the most remarkable moments in my adult life! Pretty exciting for this city girl.

The Barakettes

The kids stood up within seconds of their birth. Livestock do that. I was a proud yet nervous grandmother, worried how the three of them were going to eat with the mother having only two teats. Surely, one of them was going to be neglected! But they seemed to work that out just fine. I nicknamed the girls “The Barakettes.” Their real names, “Cocoa Puff,” “Mocha Swirl,” and “Skunk.”

Sprout and Yasmina

Then two weeks later, Yasmina went into labor. She kidded in the barn at 2am. (I woke to the sound of little cries.) I named her baby boy “Sprout.”

Joey began labor that same morning. I watched her for a long time and finally decided to take a risk and run to my office downtown to retrieve my computer. After all, labor could go on for hours, and I had work to do…

Just as that phone call you are waiting for always comes when you decide to go to the bathroom, or the elevator always arrives just when you light up that cigarette, Joey delivered as soon as I left. But I didn’t know that yet. I almost got a speeding ticket hurrying home. I ran into the little barn and saw Baraka, the Barakettes, Yasmina, and Sprout. But no Joey. They all looked to me as if to ask, “Where have you been?” Something was up. They all sensed it.

Frantically yet eagerly I ran out to look for Joey. I found her standing near the house, afterbirth hanging out of her, baby at her feet. But this baby was not standing up like the other kids. She was just lying there not breathing. Joey looked at me confused, a plea for help in her eyes. I tried everything to revive the baby, but she was already gone. I showed her to Joey then buried the lifeless newborn in the front yard in a spot where Joey could not find her.

When I returned to the backyard, Joey stood at the place where she had kidded and wailed. The wailing went on for days. I would hold her and she would stop. As soon as I walked away, she would cry again.

I gave her the homeopathic remedy Ignatia, indicated for “loss of a child.” This would quiet her cries for an hour or two, but then she would start up again. The other goats wanted nothing to do with Joey—she was too grief-stricken, and they were tending to their new offspring. So Joey bonded with me. She would follow me everywhere. She’d stand by my window and cry. She just wanted to be held. If I held her, she would calm down until I let go. I would cry with her sometimes. Her grief broke my heart. I felt her sorrow, aloneness, and confusion.

I went through the rolodex of possibilities as to why Joey might have had a stillbirth. One of my theories: I have these doggie doors for my dogs to let themselves in and out of the house and the garage. I knew it was only a matter of time before the goats, smart as they are, were going to figure out these doors.

One day I turned and saw Joey standing in my kitchen, a bewildered look on her face saying, "How did I get on this spaceship?" I quickly scurried her out. Occasionally one or both of the dwarfs Joey and Yasmina would find their way into the garage—via the garage doggie door—and climb on top of my car! One time when Joey was very very preggie, she started in through a doggie door and got wedged. My little dog Inka began harassing her to keep her outside. (Inka has taken on the role of goat wrangler.) Joey could not go forward because she was so fat, and either she could not understand the concept of reverse, or she was too afraid of Inka. So she was stuck! I had to liberate her by coaxing her out backwards. I have always wondered if that event may have harmed the fetus...

Inka     

The desert ground is hard, so when I had gone to bury Joey’s little girl, I was only able to dig a hole about a half-foot deep, place the little body into it, and cover it up with dirt and rocks. The next day, as I drove down my road admiring the beauty, I noticed something dark to the side. I pulled over and saw it was the dead baby goat. Some animal had dug her up and moved her half a mile away. It was a disconcerting discovery, and I hesitated on what to do. But I left her there.

A few days later, someone rang my doorbell. I live at the end of a private dirt road. No one I don’t know ever comes to my house. And surely no one ever rings the doorbell! It was a neighbor. He had a sad look in his eyes. “I heard you have goats. Well, one of them was found on the paved road—dead.” The baby goat was traveling again, another mile away! I suspected I would get a call next from the state of Arizona: “Ma’am, we have your dead baby goat…”

Two months later, I sold three of the kids. Now it was Baraka’s and Yasmina’s time to grieve. As the babies were put into the car of the new owner, all four remaining goats (I kept Mocha Swirl) stood by the gate and bleated their various tones of distress. Ignatia down their throats finally silenced the grief symphony.

The herd has long since recovered and come back together. Yasmina and Joey are hanging out as the sisters they are. Joey and I still have a very special connection. The does are all producing wonderful milk and everything seems to be well.

I get about 3+ quarts of milk a day. Not knowing what to do with a refrigerator full of daily replenishing milk bottles, I’ve had to be creative. I've learned to make chèvre, feta, cheddar, gouda, yogurt, and cajeta (Mexican caramel sauce). My specialty is cheesecake made out of all-goat-milk cream cheese for lactose-intolerant folk. Most lactose-intolerant people can digest goat milk. My company is called “Bleating Heart Bakery.”

Now fall has returned, and the does are once again “in season.” Which means, Heeeeeere’s Johnny! Which means, thankfully, Joey will have another chance at becoming a mother.

Laurel Chiten is an award-winning independent filmmaker. Her current project is a film about homeopathy. Go to www.blinddogfilms.com to find out more.

Read more about Joey and the further birthing of goats in Laurel's later article entitled Tiger Tiger Burning Bright.

Photo of Laurel and Joey at top by Orlando Diaz