Animalitos

My brother is leaving to go back to Kentucky tomorrow, so today we humored him went along to the stock show. Now, I know people who think the National Western Stock Show is a big deal, but I grew up here in Denver, so it's always just been that smelly event at the cow palace up on the north end of town, a strange event incongrous with our urban lives, to which our elementary schools brought us every January so that the city kids could look at cows (my uncles had a goat dairy and ranches, so I was unimpressed). Simply, January in Denver means stock show, and it always has. Still, as pedestrian and routine as it may seem when we are reminded of it by the feed lot smell wafting into downtown all month, it's a strange place for me once I'm inside the complex. I'm bootless, hatless, and Wrangler-less, and I feel a little out of place. I'm familiar with livestock but I don't have any of my own, and even though it would be cheap to buy one of those strange fluffy chickens, I'd have have nothing to do with it once I brought it home (not to mention being in violation of zoning restrictions and HOA regulations).

The hermano's current dream is to have a big spread out in the middle of nowhere with some livestock (yes, that's the rolling of my sister-in-law's eyes in the background). He wants to buy a goat for the baby (he's already determined that she'll be just as bovine-lactose intolerant as he is) and to build her a goat cart so that the goat can pull her around the neighborhood. His favorite weird variety are the fainting goats. I didn't believe him when he first mentioned them (he has a history of dressing up truth and reality), but there they are, all over youtube.com and wikipedia and the rest of the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9_CdNPuJg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fainting_goats

Goats that fall over when they's startled. How useless is that? Anywaym, they're real. Much to my brother's disappointment, there were no myotonia-afflicted caprids at the stock show today, but we had a surprisingly good time watching his tiny daughter's eyes widen at the different animals and their behaviors. We held out her hand to pet a huge angora rabbit and spent the rest of the afternoon picking the tiny fibers off her fingers, cheeks, and chupi. She's way to little to enjoy the other atractions in Children's Ranchland, but the petting zoo was just her speed.

Lola really is a western girl, somewhere deep down in a corner of her insides.