Fainting goats

My inbox is full of the unexpected these days.

From Jessica - longtime upstate resident - an email this morning: blah blah (catch up, news, a great new contact), then, introducing a soon-neighbor of mine in Tivoli:
She raises fainting goats and has a big veg and herb garden.

Two days ago, wrapped my head around bats, honeybees, and providing for titmouses (titmice?) come winter. I was thinking cozy thoughts about bucolic life-to-be, (ELLE Decor even featuring new neighborhood this month) and had begun following leads for Circa Trade's renaissance up there. My imagination was active.

And now, with this morning's mail and the spectre of an upended goat, must make space for a startling new reality of country life. The page “Fainters in Action", from R Fainting Farm: a rogues gallery of goats laid sideways, feels somehow wrong. There's nothing obviously untoward but still something unseemly about startled animals, photographed.

Not sure where to file this one.

C