City Slicker

One of of my school board perks is attending the annual Youth Fair in our county fairgrounds. My first experience was 3 years ago, and I must admit, it was the very first time I was up close and personal with real live farm animals. I remember Shannon and I sitting in the audience watching cows being shown. The announcer talked about the cow like she was a beauty contestant. He said she had "youthful udders". I swear! He said that and we laughed out loud. I still giggle when I think about it.

I have discovered something about myself, and that is, big animals scare the crap out of me. They're not just big, but kind of dumb and therefore seem pretty unpredictable. We wandered in and out of pens of cows and pigs and goats and saw some cages with chickens and rabbits. I did a lot of jumping and letting out tiny "eek" noises.

We attend these fairs because some of our students are in FFA and show their animals. I admire people who are comfortable around farm animals, I could NEVER be a farmer. I would get so emotionally attached to an animal, it would definitely have a name, and could never be part of my dinner menu. My duty at the fair is to take pix of animals for our files. The above is a baby boer goat and was in a pen with her mama. She is only about 2 feet tall and what a cutie pie! I wanted to hold her.

This guy above stuck his head through the hole in his pen then could not pull it back out because of his horns. We brought it to someone's attention and were informed he'd been doing that all morning. Hence the "dumb" in dumb animal.

While we were in the pig area, I heard a horrendous noise and some very loud snorting. This pig was in a trailer by himself and obviously not happy about it. He was trying to lift the gate with his snout (loud noise) and when I got close to look at him, he tried to charge the gate. See why I'm scared?! I asked about why he was isolated (yeah, I was the city slicker with all the dumb questions) and a man told me he was in there for a bath. Turns out, he was getting ready to show and needed grooming.

Don't even get me started about the chickens. Well, the roosters really. They were in a separate building with the rabbits and were all side by side in their little cages. I have never heard so much cock a doodle doing. Seems, the roosters were in competition with each other and continuously crowed.It was hilarious!
On the last day of the show, the animals are "sold". In my sweet little rose colored glass world, I will take that to mean that someone bought them for a pet for their children and they are going to live happily ever after on some wonderful farm.    It could happen.