Imaginatively named due to the peaking popularity of the Dukes of Hazard, Bo and Luke spent their days mincing around the farm causing general disruption to some of the more delicious animals in our stable including the succulent cows, sweet juicy lambs, and rich tender eels. Among their generally pesky nature was that fact that they ate virtually everything in their paths.
Not tin cans though, I can tell you right now goats will draw the line at tin products (yes, cartoons have been lying to you). Don’t get me started on cartoons. I mean seriously, Ninja Turtles walking on their hind legs under the tutelage of a talking rat fighting against the ungodly evil of a robot and a brain in a jar. For fuck’s sake.
But I digress.
As a young lad of 11years I watched these goats wreck havoc across all four corners of our farm. The final straw was when Bo ate a large section of the old man’s electric fence. And it wasn’t just the $4 worth of fence that was to ultimately cost Bo his and his brother their lives, it was the principal of the fact that they were like a couple of little slow motion cyclones. And what does one do when a cyclone hits? That’s right you get the rifle out and shoot shit out of it.
And let’s not forget $4 back then is probably more like $7-$7.50 which in itself really qualifies as a reason for the goat genocide.
So coincidentally the day after the unfortunate fence eating incident, the old man grabbed his trusty 22 rifle, got his two boys in tow and set off to a grassy knoll that overlooked the main, goat inhabited paddock.
I’m not saying our family was a bunch of blood thirsty kill-aholics. What I’m saying is, we had to show these goats that when you eat someone’s fence, electric or not, you have to face the consequences. With or without evidence, this is how shit goes down on Waireka Road.
So we nervously followed in our father’s slipstream to our vantage point and lay down in position.
It was one of those father son moments that will never be forgotten. Our strong, commanding dad demonstrating our total dominance at the top of the food chain – with a gun. He took steady aim with the rifle (which he later claimed to have a bent barrel – I believed him for nearly 10 years). As his finger slowly tightened over the trigger, and in total control, he turned to me and spoke in the confident dull monotone that only a man about to kill a helpless (fence eating) animal from a distance with a loaded rifle, can.
“Say your prayers goat” he muttered before turning back to the site and firing his first shot...But nothing happened.
Now to this day I have no doubt that the majority of these bullets hit either Bo or Luke. I know this for a fact as after several bullets collided with Bo’s skull causing zero damage, the old man decided pot shots into the stomach and legs might be a better angle. After exactly 21 shots were fired Bo took a knee. He then rolled over on his side. His courageous and rather nonchalant last stand was over. His last fence eaten. An unceremonious death for one the Waireka Roads most unassuming pests.
We then turned our attention to Luke. Luke had started to cotton on to this ‘desert storm-like’ display of brute force and had moved all of 3 metres away. He was now engrossed in consuming what looked like an old tree stump.
35 shots rang out before Luke started to sway like a prize fighter after 12 rounds. But Luke had one last show of defiance in him. With his last steps he moved to the edge of the gully that ran down to our pump shed, and then he rolled. He rolled with a commitment and determination I had never seen in a goat, or any other animal for that matter. He hit his target. He took out our pump shed.
On top of the grassy knoll there was silence, well, silence if you don’t count the steam coming out of dad’s ears. Forget the fence, those goats had just caused what was to be $1000 ($29,000 at least by today’s standards) worth of damage to not only the pump shed, but the pump pertained within. The psychological damage could not be measured; it was off all the conventional scales.
They won the day. In the crazy topsy turvey world of man and rifle versus goat, the goats had sacrificed their lives in search of the ultimate victory. Those mother fuckers.
But I never forgot these ancient nemeses of the farm. In fact as the ultimate tribute to Bo and Luke I swore never to ever shoot them again. This is a promise I have so far kept.
