At the county fair

[stgulik]

We have lived in this county over twenty years, yet up until today, we have never been to the fair! I think it's because we had always saved our time and energy for the bigger 'n' better state fair, which runs in August. But today we decided on the spur of the moment to see what our county puts together. (Sorry no pictures! My current cell phone is a flip model circa 2006, and the camera is such a potato, I could carve better photographs out of marble.)

Top Seven Moments of the County Fair

7. Chinese acrobats
6. Pick-pocket goats at the 4-H exhibition
5. Bored white cows with little bored white calves. And just who's watching whom, human?
4. The fact that all the kiddie finger paint art entries got Second Place.
3. Beautiful, heavenly weather
2. Duck races!
1. Little kids at the duck races

Comments

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I would have gone just for the duck races. Our county fair used to be so neat. It was in October and they actually let us kids out of school early on Wednesday so we could all go.

Then they sold the fairgrounds and started having it in a place I never went as a kid in May. MAY! What is that all about. Don't know know how stifling hot those midway tents are in MAY? I mean, that poor headless woman. And the bearded lady was just miserable.

Yeah, our county fair is still a little robust.

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

I thought fairs were supposed to be held after harvest so people could bring their jams, jellies, peaches, and er, corn husk dolls and what have you, to be judged. I'm not a country person. Maybe our county fair goes early so as not to compete with the state fair, which is held in the same venue.

[smallbrownfrog.livejournal.com]

Pickpocket goats!

Goats are amazing. Did you know they have rectangular pupils/irises? Very strange beasts.

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

I know! Goats are weirdly fascinating. I like to look at their eyes. They freak me out.

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

P.S. ICON-LOVE

[smallbrownfrog.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how rarely I get to use this icon.

[helenarickman.livejournal.com]

That sounds like good, wholesome fun! Except for those gypsy goats. Bunch of criminals.

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

One of them was patiently working the latch on his cage with his mouth. He looked up at me with his little rectangular eyes and I could hear him thinking, "Soon."

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

I can attest to the criminality of the goat mind. They have goats at the farm market I go to, and I visit them and give them head scritches. During the winter, one of the goats somehow hooked his horn into one of my cashmere fingerless gloves, and tossed it off my hand and into his pen, where he promptly put his hoof down on it. I couldn't fit my hand between the bars of the pen, so I had to use a stick, but he wouldn't get off my glove! Then his accomplice came over to sniff at the glove and I was worried that he might eat it. Finally, the first goat lifted his hoof and I flung the glove back on my side of the enclosure -- besmirched with goat poop and with a tear along the finger. I washed it, repaired it, and the goats and I are friends again. But I'm careful about those tricksy horns now!

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

I will heed your cautionary tale! As I was saying above, one of the goats had figured out the latch on his enclosure, and was patiently working it with his teeth, trying to open the gate. If goats ever really organize, it will spell trouble for the human race.