Part two
I was really starting to worry that we would not find Ray, ever. It was like a needle in a haystack. If he did manage to find a way up to the woods and I would never rule that out with a goat, I feared I would not get to him before the coyotes did. bill and I had begun are long track back from where we started this whole search and rescue mission. We were chatting a bit about the history of Indian Island all the while scanning the beach and cliff for any sign or Ray. Weird thin was we did not see any tracks... I thought this quite odd.. Nary a one was seen by either of us.. We were getting back closer to our starting point and jabbering away when I looked at Bill and damned if not right behind him about 2/3 the way up the cliff was you guessed it , Ray.. He was standing there with his head down and not moving a muscle.. He looked almost catatonic. I walked to the base of the cliff and began climbing. Now mind you this was a sand cliff... So every step I took it would crumble under my feet. I was hoping that mr catatonic would stay that way at least until I had my hands on him. He didn't even blink when I rattled the rocks in my bucket or showed him the hay.. I could tell the poor little fella had, some stories to tell about his night "out".
I think I forgot to mention that Ray though a tiny goat maybe 35 pounds was as wild as T Rex. He is one I raised and was a triplet. His brothers Charlie and Doug were always like pocket puppies. Not Ray. Nope he was as wild and flighty as they come. So I was a bit worried to say the least that now that I had found him I would not be able to catch him. When I was about 15 feet from him he suddenly woke up and began climbing up higher.. I was like " oh crap" though I did not use the word crap... You see the higher he went the steeper and more treacherous it was. ray of course had no problem with this because , we'll he is a goat and goats live to climb. So I got up as high as I could go and began to shimmy my way along the cliff face on a teeny tiny little path that went from about 2 feet wide to about 2 inches wide in very short order. Sand, remember I told you it was sand. ray found himself a sweet little ledge to stand on and there he stood about 25 feet from me. He was not going anywhere. I could tell.. He just had that f&¥€ you look in his eye.. I all of a sudden was feeling very mortal up there on my teeny tiny little path. One slip of the foot and I would be down about 30 or 40 feet.. I don,t know call it my age or my vast life experience but I just thought that this would not be a good thing. So what did I do? I sent in Pearl the squirrel ... Aka the Terminator. She climbed that slope like she was a goat however unlike the goat she slid back down several times. She was undaunted however and made another attempt. This time she was up on the ledge with Ray.. Well Ray was none to happy about his new cliff mate. I asked Pearl to "walk up" herding lingo for " get his little ass down here now!" pearl obliged only to get butted down off the goat perch. This went on several times until I thought there is no way he is coming down even with Pearl. Soooo what next? I yell down to Bill " I think the only way we are going to get him is with, you guessed it, the fire department" Bill replies we can do that I will go get them.. Now this takes the saving a cat from a tree to a whole new level.. About 20 minutes later Indian islands finest arrive.. They take one look and just kinda laugh.. So what do they do? Well basically exactly what I did only there were 3 of them. They first tried to climb to the farthest point I made it to only to have the sand give way under their feet sending them sliding about 30 feet down.. They liked that. You know how young guys are they find that kinda thin "fun" next one guy decided he would try to grab on to one of the little fir saplings that was growing on Rays ledge.. He got a hold of it all right but his feet slipped and he was left dangling by that wee little tree until his buddies could help him get down. One fella kept getting up to the top only to slide down over and over.. He had to stop to get sand out of his boots and underwear. Then one decided he would try to grab hold of a tree root at the top of the cliff to swing up to the top so he could then walk over and come at Ray from above. Instead he got an ass full of sticker bushes. By now the Captain is getting impatient and about ready to tell them to call it quits.. This called for drastic action.. We all started throwing little sand clods at Ray hoping to flush him down.. Nope!!! Finally, I decided to climb back up and give it one more go. The plan this time, I go back to the little 2 inch ledge and shimmery out and one of the guys tries as hard as he can to make it up under rays perch where the little tree stood. If he could get up that far he'd would be able to perch. That is pretty much all he would be able to do once he got up there but we didn't care, we would figure it all out once we were both in our places. Now fire dude had my little shepherds crook and I had the lead rope. We were both hoping our tools would come in useful somehow once we were in position. Now, as soon as fire dude get up to the perch Ray moves off the perch. Yep I know big surprise... He goes to the treacherous are I will call the chute of doom.. And because he is a goat he manages to make that into a new perch for himself.. Fire dude is stuck now on Rays old perch and if he moves the least bit to quickly he will slide down to the bottom. He does however have his little red shepherd crook which he uses to poke at Ray to try and get him to move down the chute of doom. ray starts instead moving to get back up on his old perch where fire dude is clinging to.. Fire dude freaks out because ray has horns and he is afraid he will get butted off his perch. I start trying to rope Ray who has retreated back to the chute of doom with my lead rope. I get it over his head after several attempts but he moves and it just goes all the way over his body and he steps out of it. Fire dude has aggravated Ray enough now by poking at him that he is actually barely, reachable if I stretch my body as far as I can. I have one of the other fire dudes standing behind me on the ledge to " spot " me so that I do not slide down the chute of doom with Ray once I get hold of his horn. I say to him, fire dud just hold my ass.. Then I realized that sounded really wrong and I said I sont mean literally and he said, ya I kinda figured. I did get Rays horn finally and thank god he was pretty tuckered out by now because he did not fight me much.. All well and good except just as I have hold of ray my trusty rescuer who is supposed to be "holding my ass" vanishes from behind me and slides down to the bottom. I like suck in my breath and make like I am a lizard and suck myself to the cliff wall. I yell down uhhh hey!! You are supposed to be up here, rescuing me. He says " I will be right back up I promise and I say uhhhh that would be good. So when slip and slide fire dude finally gets back to the top with me and I can breathe again I say hold my pant loop and don't let me and Ray fall. He proceeds to do just that but in the process gives me the wedgie to end all wedgies.. We slowly and I mean slowly back up farther and farther until we are back to the wider ledge. From then on it was a breeze getting down.. I thin ray was relieved when it was all said and done.. He was very happy to be back at the job site with the herd and I think he slept really well that night. As for the fire dudes. I bought them a cake as they were awesome.. We all laughed a lot.. Well except for Ray he didn't laugh but I know he was very happy to not be coyote food.. So was I ...
The End
I was really starting to worry that we would not find Ray, ever. It was like a needle in a haystack. If he did manage to find a way up to the woods and I would never rule that out with a goat, I feared I would not get to him before the coyotes did. bill and I had begun are long track back from where we started this whole search and rescue mission. We were chatting a bit about the history of Indian Island all the while scanning the beach and cliff for any sign or Ray. Weird thin was we did not see any tracks... I thought this quite odd.. Nary a one was seen by either of us.. We were getting back closer to our starting point and jabbering away when I looked at Bill and damned if not right behind him about 2/3 the way up the cliff was you guessed it , Ray.. He was standing there with his head down and not moving a muscle.. He looked almost catatonic. I walked to the base of the cliff and began climbing. Now mind you this was a sand cliff... So every step I took it would crumble under my feet. I was hoping that mr catatonic would stay that way at least until I had my hands on him. He didn't even blink when I rattled the rocks in my bucket or showed him the hay.. I could tell the poor little fella had, some stories to tell about his night "out".
I think I forgot to mention that Ray though a tiny goat maybe 35 pounds was as wild as T Rex. He is one I raised and was a triplet. His brothers Charlie and Doug were always like pocket puppies. Not Ray. Nope he was as wild and flighty as they come. So I was a bit worried to say the least that now that I had found him I would not be able to catch him. When I was about 15 feet from him he suddenly woke up and began climbing up higher.. I was like " oh crap" though I did not use the word crap... You see the higher he went the steeper and more treacherous it was. ray of course had no problem with this because , we'll he is a goat and goats live to climb. So I got up as high as I could go and began to shimmy my way along the cliff face on a teeny tiny little path that went from about 2 feet wide to about 2 inches wide in very short order. Sand, remember I told you it was sand. ray found himself a sweet little ledge to stand on and there he stood about 25 feet from me. He was not going anywhere. I could tell.. He just had that f&¥€ you look in his eye.. I all of a sudden was feeling very mortal up there on my teeny tiny little path. One slip of the foot and I would be down about 30 or 40 feet.. I don,t know call it my age or my vast life experience but I just thought that this would not be a good thing. So what did I do? I sent in Pearl the squirrel ... Aka the Terminator. She climbed that slope like she was a goat however unlike the goat she slid back down several times. She was undaunted however and made another attempt. This time she was up on the ledge with Ray.. Well Ray was none to happy about his new cliff mate. I asked Pearl to "walk up" herding lingo for " get his little ass down here now!" pearl obliged only to get butted down off the goat perch. This went on several times until I thought there is no way he is coming down even with Pearl. Soooo what next? I yell down to Bill " I think the only way we are going to get him is with, you guessed it, the fire department" Bill replies we can do that I will go get them.. Now this takes the saving a cat from a tree to a whole new level.. About 20 minutes later Indian islands finest arrive.. They take one look and just kinda laugh.. So what do they do? Well basically exactly what I did only there were 3 of them. They first tried to climb to the farthest point I made it to only to have the sand give way under their feet sending them sliding about 30 feet down.. They liked that. You know how young guys are they find that kinda thin "fun" next one guy decided he would try to grab on to one of the little fir saplings that was growing on Rays ledge.. He got a hold of it all right but his feet slipped and he was left dangling by that wee little tree until his buddies could help him get down. One fella kept getting up to the top only to slide down over and over.. He had to stop to get sand out of his boots and underwear. Then one decided he would try to grab hold of a tree root at the top of the cliff to swing up to the top so he could then walk over and come at Ray from above. Instead he got an ass full of sticker bushes. By now the Captain is getting impatient and about ready to tell them to call it quits.. This called for drastic action.. We all started throwing little sand clods at Ray hoping to flush him down.. Nope!!! Finally, I decided to climb back up and give it one more go. The plan this time, I go back to the little 2 inch ledge and shimmery out and one of the guys tries as hard as he can to make it up under rays perch where the little tree stood. If he could get up that far he'd would be able to perch. That is pretty much all he would be able to do once he got up there but we didn't care, we would figure it all out once we were both in our places. Now fire dude had my little shepherds crook and I had the lead rope. We were both hoping our tools would come in useful somehow once we were in position. Now, as soon as fire dude get up to the perch Ray moves off the perch. Yep I know big surprise... He goes to the treacherous are I will call the chute of doom.. And because he is a goat he manages to make that into a new perch for himself.. Fire dude is stuck now on Rays old perch and if he moves the least bit to quickly he will slide down to the bottom. He does however have his little red shepherd crook which he uses to poke at Ray to try and get him to move down the chute of doom. ray starts instead moving to get back up on his old perch where fire dude is clinging to.. Fire dude freaks out because ray has horns and he is afraid he will get butted off his perch. I start trying to rope Ray who has retreated back to the chute of doom with my lead rope. I get it over his head after several attempts but he moves and it just goes all the way over his body and he steps out of it. Fire dude has aggravated Ray enough now by poking at him that he is actually barely, reachable if I stretch my body as far as I can. I have one of the other fire dudes standing behind me on the ledge to " spot " me so that I do not slide down the chute of doom with Ray once I get hold of his horn. I say to him, fire dud just hold my ass.. Then I realized that sounded really wrong and I said I sont mean literally and he said, ya I kinda figured. I did get Rays horn finally and thank god he was pretty tuckered out by now because he did not fight me much.. All well and good except just as I have hold of ray my trusty rescuer who is supposed to be "holding my ass" vanishes from behind me and slides down to the bottom. I like suck in my breath and make like I am a lizard and suck myself to the cliff wall. I yell down uhhh hey!! You are supposed to be up here, rescuing me. He says " I will be right back up I promise and I say uhhhh that would be good. So when slip and slide fire dude finally gets back to the top with me and I can breathe again I say hold my pant loop and don't let me and Ray fall. He proceeds to do just that but in the process gives me the wedgie to end all wedgies.. We slowly and I mean slowly back up farther and farther until we are back to the wider ledge. From then on it was a breeze getting down.. I thin ray was relieved when it was all said and done.. He was very happy to be back at the job site with the herd and I think he slept really well that night. As for the fire dudes. I bought them a cake as they were awesome.. We all laughed a lot.. Well except for Ray he didn't laugh but I know he was very happy to not be coyote food.. So was I ...
The End
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