Page 18 of Big Island Sunrise
The woman harrumphed and returned to her garden.
She still hadn’t fully unpacked, and it took ten minutes to sort through her luggage one-handed and find a pair of tweezers. It took another ten to carefully pick out the biggest spines, which did little to dull the pain in her hand.
Most of the spines were still in there, either broken off under the skin or so tiny that she couldn’t see them. She could feel them, though. They radiated a burning, prickling pain that intensified when she moved her fingers.
A sudden shouting started up outside, and she went to see what the commotion was.
“Back! Get out, you hell beasts! Out!”
She followed the noise and saw her neighbor on the other side of the collapsed wire fencing. It appeared as though two of Emma’s goats - because she supposed theywereher goats - had hopped right over the slumped bit of fence and gone straight for the neighbor’s garden.
What she couldn’t figure out was how they had gotten out of their paddock to begin with. She briefly considered going over the same way that they had, but thought better of it. She was liable to injure herself climbing over that pile of bramble and wire, especially when she could hardly use her left hand.
She hurried around through the front gate and into the garden, where the neighbor lady was flapping a dish towel at the goats to no visible effect.
Emma grabbed the collar that the mother goat wore and tried pulling her away from the neighbor’s cabbages, but the goat just planted her feet and gave her great rounded horns an irritated shake.
She tried grabbing the buckling, who was nearly as big as his mother, but he responded by butting her in the thigh. She thought that it was a playful headbutt, but she didn’t really know them well enough to be sure. Playful or not, it was going to leave a bruise.
“Do you see?” the woman snapped. “What did I tell you about the fence?”
“I’m very sorry. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“You can start by stopping it from happening right now!” She snapped a towel in the buckling’s face, and he stepped away from her cabbage.
“Come on,” Emma pleaded, taking the mother goat by one horn. “Come home.”
The doe shook her off again, and Emma took a nervous step backwards as the buckling lowered his head.
“Feeding time!” Tara came through the gate with a bucket of feed, and the goats trotted right to her.
“Tell her to tie up those goats!” their neighbor shouted.
“Hello, Mrs. Rasmussen. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Tara.” Mrs. Rasmussen turned to Emma with a stony expression. “You owe me three heads of cabbage and… I’ll have to survey the damage before I tell you the rest.”
“Yes, well, I’ll see to the fence, shall I?”
Mrs. Rasmussen harrumphed and stomped back into her house. Emma hurried to follow Tara and the goats back to her own front gate.
“Thank you so much,” she said.
“I could hear her caterwauling from my place.”
“You’re a lifesaver.”
“Anytime.” Tara led the goats through the Kealoha front gate and handed the bucket to Emma. “After you get them back in their pen, you might want to come check on Kai.”
“Is he okay?”
“I’m not sure. He was hunkered down in the fort for a while, looking grumpy.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Emma led the troublesome animals back to their paddock, which took up a generous portion of the back of the lot. She was horrified to find the gate open.
The other two goats were out as well, but they had opted to wreak havoc closer to home. Still, it was getting close to milking time, and they were happy enough to stop nibbling on the fruit trees and follow the green bucket back home.
