Percy

The afternoons where I can just sit on our patio, reading and drinking coffee, are some of my favorite types of days. Now that the weather is improving, the frequency of these days are increasing. Yesterday was one such day.

I'd just finished my book, and was scrolling lazily through my other options (I wrote up a review for the Barnes and Noble Nook, an e-reader that I bought over Christmas, so I should really post that at some point), trying to figure out which story came next chronologically in the series I'm currently reading, when I heard a weird bleat.

It was definitely a goat bleat, but I was perplexed, since my family doesn't have goats, my neighbors don't have goats, and the only herds of animals I've seen in my neighborhood are some cows that used to trek up and down the dry riverbed behind the house. So I cautiously climbed down the steps to the grassy yard and there he was - a goat, with his leg tied to a post.

As soon as I saw him, my dumb brain of course gave him a name - Percy. Regret instantly hit me for naming him. "Oh you idiot," I berated myself. "Don't name the goat! You're probably going to eat him soon!" And then I thought, "Wait, we've never kept goats, and neither does anyone in the neighborhood! Maybe the family in the village is just going to come get him and take him out to the fields near Kvareli and he'll be able to lead a happy little goat life!"

I let this delusion continue, and indeed it grew once Bebo and my host mom came home and were surprised by the appearance of Percy. Neither of them seemed to be expecting it, and they didn't know why he was in our yard. My optimism for the future of this ungulate skyrocketed.

Later in the evening, Bebo informed me that we needed to take Percy to a neighbors house, because they had a shed for him. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a goat to go a specific direction, especially one that you want it to go when it doesn't want to go that way, but it's really difficult, and usually really counterproductive. The difficulty is almost exponentially more when there isn't anything around its neck that you can grab onto, and instead you're pulling it's leg, it's trying to run away, and it's screaming in pain because legs aren't supposed to bend certain ways. Bebo kept tugging at Percy, relying on the old standard of "just drag things if they won't willingly come with you," but I stopped this right quick and just picked him up. Goat screams are one of the worst sounds ever, and if Percy was ever going to go running through the grassy fields next to the Alazani River, he needed to have all of his legs.

I'd expect, in a place where people regularly carry turkeys on the roofs of Lada Nivas, and drive backwards down busy streets, and a whole plethora of other ridiculous shit, that a girl carrying a goat down the road wouldn't be that big of a scene. But it was. Bebo just followed me and Percy, laughing the whole way, and the neighbors were guffawing so much they couldn't do anything but take pictures. 

We put him in an old stable in the neighbors yard, and that was the last time I saw Percy. As Bebo and I walked home, I was pretty happy with the little life I'd constructed for him in my head.

And then I came home from school today to two fat, old, shirtless Georgian guys, chain smoking and cleaning out an animal that was hanging from a tree in the yard.

"It could be some other goat," a voice inside me said. "It doesn't have to be...oh, shit. There's his little head on the ground..."

Sorry, Percy. I wanted you to have a good little goat life, I really did. Instead, I think you're gonna be a damn tasty meal!