Snow...

Cold; not enough to have fun in... just enough to be uncomfortable. I've been trying to figure out next summer... next year... how I will get into college... how I will take the classes I need to take... I've never had to think about so many tests at the same time.

On the bright side I have been doing more with my goats of late... mainly trying to get some hooves trimmed... Neither of them enjoy it... Pippin least of all. Step by step I go. Trying to keep my principles aligned with my actions. In all things.

For want of anything more interesting to post here is an essay I wrote for english a month or so ago... about my 16th birthday.

Sixteen

They call it sweet sixteen... Maybe bittersweet is more accurate. The day itself was not particularly anything. Another birthday which I used, as I often do, to make my family do manual labor that might not otherwise get done. In the evening my grandfather told me that I was now “farm manager.” The next day we went to church and, in the evening a goat farm. But the day before my birthday....

I had been at AB-tech all morning. Mum called as I was waiting for Dad to pick me up and take me to get my Learner's permit, she told me that they had found Mama, our chicken, in the barn; alive but with a gaping, maggoty wound on her led. I called the vet's office on the drive to the DMV. They said that I could get antibiotics for the price of $24. I said I'd call them back. We got my permit and drove home. I went to look at Mama. The wound was moving, crawling, as maggots of all sizes ate her alive. She couldn't recover, and yet she didn't seem miserable, at least, she was eating and standing up. But I (and my mother) doubted she could last much longer. I called the vet again and said that we were just going to let her die peacefully. I described the wound and Ann said “That isn't a peaceful death.”

Then followed a conversation on how to kill her. We could break her neck, cut her head off, or take her to the vet's gas her down and then do either of the above. We chose to cut her head off. We though the knife was sharp. We thought we were starting from the right side and so would slit her jugular. Somehow it didn't work quite right. She didn't die on the first try, or the second. I think the third did it. I hope so at least.

If I'm going to be a vet I will need to kill, but not like that. I will have tools. I can try to save first and then let them slip unconsciously into oblivion. In humanity's great fight for life or a dignified death the score in my battle is one: nil, and at sixteen I'm on the losing side.

M.