September 5, 2020
When I came
to France in February the last thing in my mind that I anticipated was becoming
a goat midwife to a mother in distress. My story begins when I came in 2020 to
Civrac to work on my book. One day in
April there was a knock on the front door. Standing outside was a middle age
woman who spoke only French. Between pidgin French and pidgin English I
understood that she wanted me to come around the corner and see something. Across
the street from me was a overgrown house and field that that she hoped to clear,
using goats to eat the vegetation She had brought three goats from Bordeaux and
was going to put them inside the fence to eat down the overgrown weeds and
bushes.
She made it
clear to me that she would appreciate it if I would provide water for her goats
by filling a wheelbarrow which was sitting by the gate. She left without giving
me her name or her cell phone but indicated that her mother in law used to live
in the boarded-up house across the street and that she was the owner of this
property. Having plenty of time on my hands I agreed without thinking.
Morning
after morning I got up from the breakfast table and carried a bucket of water over
to the goats. They always hung back in the brush, appearing to be afraid of me.
When day I got the idea that perhaps if I brought a dry baguette, they would
come to me. Thus, began a ritual in which each morning I brought a demi-baguette.
I fed it to the goats by tearing it up and feeding them each a few small
pieces. They obviously enjoyed variety in their diet and came to expect me to
be there every morning. They would be standing at the gate and jumping up
trying to get into my pocket to get the baguette out of my pocket.
There were
three goats in my herd and as one does, I began to see them as individuals. The
biggest one I called Sergeant because she is the biggest and the pushiest and
clearly ruled the group. The second goat had two brown stripes on her back, so
I called her Corporal. Independent and clearly ready to lead she would always
find a place to stand where the Sergeant couldn't push her away. The smallest
and weakest of the group I called Private. She was the most reluctant to come
to me and was easily pushed away by Sergeant . The goats had never made any noise
in the whole time that I had been in charge of them. I tried bleating and I
played the harmonica, but I was met with silence. Remember this was during the Confinement in
France for COVID19.
Yesterday
morning we entered a new phase. As I was filling my bucket with water in front
of my house to take it to the goats, I heard a bleating sound as though a goat
was in distress. I walked around with my bucket of water and there were all
three of the goats waiting for me as usual. I gave pieces to Sergeant and Corporal
very easily but Private stood off to one side and seemed less lively. She took
one small piece of bread from me and then turned around and went and laid down.
As she walked away, I saw what I thought was a hoof hang out of her vagina. At
that moment, my medical training flash back into my mind. I delivered 75 babies
a Cook County hospital in 1960 and knew the basic maneuvers necessary for the
delivery of a newborn. The fact that I saw one foot meant to me that it was
probably a breech presentation. Ordinarily a baby is born head-first, if
everything is working exactly as it's supposed to. When the baby comes out in any
other direction, complications occur. I figure the same rules must apply to
goats. While I was standing there
contemplating my dilemma, my neighbor across the street. Denis Munoz, who is
blind came out with his wife. They don't speak English and I don't speak
French. Denny's wife made it clear to me somehow that she understood from the
bleating that the goat was in distress. Problem: she and I are both of an age
that precludes chasing goats thought blackberry bushes.
Consider for
a second the situation that I was in. I speak only a little French and didn't
have any idea at the moment who I should call to find out how to take care of
the goat. Then his wife and I talked about it using hand gestures and our
mixture of French and English and it occurred to me that there was a veterinary
office next to the coffee shop where I drink my morning coffee in Begadan. It was 12 noon on Saturday and Siri told the
vet closed at 12:30 The goat had been in distress for at least six hours. Then
new actors appeared in this drama. Denis’s son, Jose’, and his wife, Esther, who
had come down from Paris to visit Denis had been sleeping in a room right
across the street from the goats. They came out and told me that the Esther had
heard the sounds of the goat and said “She's having a baby.” So now we are 4
French people and one American standing, discussing what to do. I said I'm going
to go to the veterinary office and see if I can get someone to come and help.
I drove to Begadan
in five minutes. It's 1 1/2 kilometers away and met the receptionist as she was
closing the shutters for the weekend. Of course she spoke French and I spoke
English so I began to use my cell phone as my translation device, explaining
that we had a goat in distress and needed someone to look at it. Her boss, the
vet, appeared and explained to that this
was a veterinary office for dogs and cats only. She gave me the phone number of
a veterinary office about 1/2 hour away.
I went back
down to my house and met with Denis and his wife and Jose his son and Esther
his girlfriend. I gave them the phone number and they called but got no answer.
What to do? I called my housekeeper, Corinne and explained the situation to her.
She asked me to write it down on a text message because I wasn’t clear enough
on the phone in my explanation. I gave Corinne the phone numbers and she called
them and was told that the veterinarian was in surgery and wouldn't be out
until about 3:30.
Corinne my
housekeeper has a heart as big as all outdoors. The next thing I knew she's at
my front door with her two daughters: Lison age 18 and Eva 30. We still had not
seen the goat up close to make a good diagnosis. Catching a goat in a bramble
of blackberries and brush was a really impossible job. A mother and two
daughters and I when into the fenced area and tried to catch the goat. None of
us were wearing proper clothing to be running through blackberry bushes. Lison
who had a pair of shorts on was the least prepared for this expedition but
managed to chase Private into a situation where she caught hold of her. She and
her sister carried Private out to the gate and we, for the first time, that a
chance to see what the actual situation was. Corinne had come prepared with a
variety of house cleaning supplies including some rubber gloves which she put
on and became a midwife. She could feel one leg but she couldn't find the other
leg and so we were stumped as to how to get the kid out of the mother . So they
carried Private from the gated area to my backyard and put her on my back plaza.
They had other things to do and so they left me to watch the goat until the
veterinarian arrived at 3:30.
I tried to work
on the crossword puzzle from the New York times and I read a chapter for my
book, “Wine and War in France” in the Second World war. Suddenly there was a
knock on my front door and a young woman veterinarian was there. She brought
with her a bag of gloves and medications and ropes. She began the same process
that Corinne had done in order get the second leg so that she could extract the
fetus but could not find the other leg. Finally she did find the leg and then, was not strong enough to extract the kid by
herself My job was to hold the goat down while she pulled legs, trying to
extract the fetus . Finally she tied a rope to each foot and she and Jose’ pulled
on the feet as hard as they could and I held the head as hard as I could and
the kid was delivered. The many hours of
lack of oxygen meant that the kid was dead, mother was exhausted, and the
doctor and I were exhausted. The Veterinarian tried to extract the placenta and
make the goat feel comfortable. She gave her antibiotics and a shot with antibiotics.
I asked her, “what do you think the goat's chances of making it are?” She said,
“20%.”
At this
point it was 5:30 and everybody was ready to leave but the question was what do
we do with the goat who's recovering. Someone found an old blanket and we tried
to lay the goat on the blanket and cover her up. We got water and hay so she
would have food. She laid out in the plaza. We covered her up and I checked on
her until I went to bed at 10:30. This morning I got up and checked on
her. She was alert and responsive and
had moved some in the night but was not mobile.
As I was typing this, I heard bleating.
I went to check and she was in a foetal position. Jose’ and Esther came before their exercise run and afterwards and agreed it did not
look good but we waited.
Over the
course of 3 months being the goatherd, I became attached to them. It is amazing
how their personalities engaged with me. To see Private in distress was very
upsetting. I thought about all the women
in Africa at Heal Africa in Goma, Zaire and Paul Farmers PIH hospitals in
Rwanda and other sites where women are taken care of in the birth process or
where repairs are done in cases where the mother did not get timely help.
Seeing an
animal go through this process essentially alone being taken care of by Humans
with whom she could not communicate directly must been a lonely
experience. I, at least had 7 French
speaking humans, who were doing all they knew to help the goat. We shared the grief
or pain together.
The next
morning as I was typing this Nadia the owner of the goats appeared at my door .
She had with her daughter who spoke English and so we were able to communicate.
She brought a box of French pastries which I'll have to figure out what to do
with. I can’t eat them. Nadia said, “thank
you for taking care of the goat.”
Then we went
out to see the goat because I told her that it was my impression that the goat
had died some hours before. The goat was lying in the same position and clearly
was not alert and responsive.
So I lost
the kid yesterday and the mother today. I never knew I could feel such loss
over an animal death. I only knew them
from feeding bits of baguettes and bringing a bucket of water for 15 minutes a
day contact. The bonding that goes on between living beings is something I
haven't felt at that elemental level in a long time. It seems like the death of
an animal brings me closer to the real desolation of death. Recently several of
my friends, John Lewis and Amo Houghton have died but the sense of their
passing seemed more intellectual to me then the passing of my goats.
I am going
to walk in the vineyards. I walked 9645 steps thinking.
