Minute Mystery: the Missing Goat

Chauncey is gone. The gate is open, his hay and water dishes are in place, but no goat-whiskered face topped with a pair of crusty horns. At first I thought perhaps someone didn’t latch the gate behind them. Chauncey is wise to butting it open with those horns until it creaks open. He has in other times gaily traipsed across the field in search of the neighbor’s prized sunflowers. Looking closer at the ground before the goat pen, I get a sinking feeling. This is no ordinary goat disappearance.

My first clue is the drag marks his little hooves left scratched in the dirt outside the pen. His bandana is wrapped around a rock. There is no note of ransom or explanation, just a sense of dread left at the scene. My heart constricts. Who has stolen my goat?

I recall the displaced goatherd living a disgruntled life up the craggy canyon, his long-neglected goat bells hanging abandoned. I have often heard his garbled yodel as he leans on his staff and imagine he has enviously watched me playing catch with my dear goat.

My long-suffering brother shuffles wearily along wearing a pained expression and a very unusual shirt that seems to have animal hair fibers woven in. Where have I seen that shade of gray before? When I ask where he got it, he sighs. “A traveling salesman stopped in while you were gone. He said he had some fresh new hair shirts in his collection”.  The slick fellow wearing the brown polyester suit and the bowler hat that I saw leaving the house had what looked like the end of a rope sticking out of his stuffed sales case.  The wind mourns the empty paddock. Chauncey is gone.