About 4 years ago now, early one Sunday morning we went to take our dogs for their normal morning meander around the paddock, only to realise we were being watched by 3 faces from the verge on the side of the highway.
Three beautiful male goats, their ears still bleeding from where the tags had been removed had spent the night up against our fence, drawn we assume by the sounds of us feeding the alpacas, sheep and pigs the night before. Luckily they'd remained safe on the extremely busy highway, although how we've got no idea.
Then there was the problem (we thought) of how we were going to get them off the highway without incident, as my partner made it to the front gate only to find them standing in the middle of the road, at the bottom of the ridge that would mean any of the grain trucks that hurtle down the road wouldn't even see them until the very last minute.
But the boys took one look at him and ran towards him, following him straight down our drive to our house gate, following him and the cart of hay from there through to the paddock, and into the pigs holding yard.
Nobody claimed them. Some utter piece of shit had obviously just dumped them. They were tame, hand raised we'd guess, their dehorning had been botched and they were desperately thin with overgrown toenails and in need of some care.
They've been here ever since - last thing in the world we needed or wanted. They've been a joy and a source of constant amusement with only occasionally proving to be right pains in the arse. We named them the "Three Tenors" and now we've only got 2 of them.
Pav was always slightly different from the other two. He was quieter. More cuddly. More inclined to get himself into trouble. We've had to extract him from a few hazards, we've had problems with the botched horn, we've always had to trim his nails more than the other two, and he's always been a slightly different shape and perpetually hungry. Which made his sudden refusal to eat a couple of weeks ago a bit of a shock. After initially investigating if he might have urinary tract / stone problems, it then became apparent that his rumen had shut down. Long story short, we tried all the suggested methods of getting it to kick back into action, but there was something underlying going on, and within a week or so, he still couldn't eat and was starting to show signs of weakness. So we had to intervene and he's now buried with the elderly alpaca, Pascoe, and pig Billie, who we've also lost this year.
It's going to be "one of those years" as everyone, including us, shows signs of age. It's been a hard hard year already and we're not looking forward to how it continues to play out, although, touch wood, so far, everyone else is upright and looking okay. And we're watching, oh boy are we watching.