A near miss!

I am so glad rams don’t behave like male goats. We have five rams and one buck; tonight I’m thinking one buck is more than enough.

As rut draws near the rams are growing fatter noses and growling at one another quite a bit—and that’s the extent of their rutty behavior. In the meanwhile, Martok (Ozark Jewels General Martok, Nubian buck extraordinaire) is making our Stink-o-Meter spin like an airplane propeller.

Last year he was a yearling. Although he engaged in the usual dubious bucky behaviors like peeing in his face and whooping loudly at the pretty does (and even some of the ewes), his musk glands apparently hadn’t matured. So, he was pretty mild-smelling, all things considered.

They’re mature this year. He makes our previous bucks (all registered Boers) smell like Chanel No.5. The crown of his head is oily-stinky and it reeks to high heaven. The fact that his face is usually drenched with urine adds to the ambiance.

And, like all good bucks who know their mamas love them, he thinks he has to put his scent on me. This usually amounts to vigorous scrubbing with his head (while I try to hold him back and shout, “No! No!”). He doesn’t scrub John; he pees on John’s shoes.

Tonight after feeding I decided to dunk myself in the little plastic wading pool that serves double duty as a watering hole for sheep and goats and a refreshing place for John and me to cool off. I shed my shoes, climbed in, closed my eyes and settled back—ahhhh!

A few minutes later something (intuition?) said, “Open your eyes.” I glanced over my shoulder and—there was Martok twisting his body sideways to deliver a jet of urine in my direction. I set a world record leaping out of the pool!

He seems so disappointed at my lack of appreciation. He’s a former bottle baby and an incredibly sweet guy, but bucks have decidedly strange ideas during rut. He’s only trying to mark me as his property, but I do not want him to do that, no siree!