by Justin Cox

Created on: August 28, 2008   Last Updated: January 08, 2009

The colorful history of my next door neighbor's gardening and farming antics includes many memorable and noteworthy stories that include the time he caught his truck on fire pulling the hay wagon and the time he knocked himself out trying to free a stuck tractor. None remain in my memory as vividly as the time he brought home the twins in an attempt at inexpensive weed control.

I realize that at first it might not sound funny describing an otherwise nice, smart, gentleman involved with such destruction and potentially dangerous scenarios, but you really had to be there. You also really had to know Mr. Adams. You see, throughout my childhood he was a marvel to all of the local kids. Mr. Adams was Green Acres meets Mr. Magoo, meets Chevy Chase personified. He developed such a reputation around town and with the local kids that we would gather anytime we heard he was up to something just to watch the show. As mentioned earlier the carnage poor Mr. Adams left in his wake on that beautiful little farm almost surely exceeded any he had intentionally inflicted during his long military career. There were burned trucks, concussions from bumper jacks, and most notably the raging goats.

Mr. Adams was a retired military man who had commanded much respect and held positions of significant authority prior to settling down in our little town to enjoy the peaceful gentleman's farming life. He had a picture perfect little thirty acre farm with good soil, farmhouse, woodshed, even the big red barn right out of a Rockwell picture. He also seemed to have the ambition to really work the land. Unfortunately Mr. Adams was not blessed with sufficient mechanical aptitude to open a cardboard milk carton without assistance and his green thumb only looked that way because he probably pinched it in the tractor's three point hitch. One particularly bothersome task for any landowner is mowing and weeding and Mr. Adams hated it. He spent more time working under his old Farmall than he ever did working on it cutting the grass. This is where the twins come in.

Now in theory, a pair of goats should be able to assist with weed and grass control tasks and require very little maintenance. In actual practice, however, they provided old Mr. Adams with slightly less than that. He brought them home on a Sunday in a crate and tied them outside the house on a rope attached to a stake configured in such a manner so each could roam and mow' a perfect circle approximately thirty feet in diameter. The theory was that ever few days they would be moved and, over the course of the summer, they would assist in a great deal of the yard work.

Day one came and went without incident. The goats seemed content to browse their circles and do as you would expect goats to do.

Day two and the goats were gone. Well, not really gone, just no longer attached to their respective ropes. Upon closer inspection Mr. Adams found them camped out on top of his wife's 1969 Buick Electra convertible. It seems the twins liked to climb and Buick's were their favorite thing in the whole world to climb. Besides climbing classic automobiles it seems the second most favored thing for goats to do is eat. These goats were hungry. By the time he convinced them to cease and desist eating the Buick they had worked their way down through the soft top and had taken a noteworthy portion of the dash, seats and carpeting.

Day three and the goats were gone, again.

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