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The Baby Rescue Goat Who Cracked Me Open

Written by Jill

Read time | under 5 minutes | Tissues optional.

He slept his last few hours in my arms.

I called him Bisous, the French word for kisses because the moment he was handed to me I couldn’t contain myself.

I kissed his little head every chance I got.

And there were a lot of chances during those three dedicated days.

But that night, in my arms, swaddled and cuddled to my side, he cried out a few times. By morning, I just knew something was off—wrong.

The vet, she said she’d come but because it was Covid times, it wouldn’t be for a while.

So he suffered.

And I held him through it all.

For hours.

Waiting.

And when she arrived, I was sobbing, still holding his near life-less body on my lap, praying silently that it wasn’t too late.

But it was. I already knew it. The tears rushing down my cheeks knew it.

The vet, she confirmed it.

Feeling hopeless, like it was my fault this adorable little goat was at death’s door.

The vet, she felt responsible too, having taken hours to come. Seeing me on the floor—emotionally spent, knowing I’d probably been holding him this way since my early morning call.

And now with the sun shining it’s past mid-day rays, she tried everything but he was already limp and suffering.

Even if she could revive him, she didn’t know what condition he’d be in.

So I made the hard choice to ease his suffering and let him go peacefully.

I held him and sobbed silently, unable to breathe, and unwilling to leave him.

I remember it hurt hard.

Maybe because we’d been to the vet the day before. At the clinic, on the table, she’s checked him out. Thought he was fine.

“But he’s having trouble eating. Won’t take the bottle.”

“Yes, but he’s also munching on greens, right?”

“More mouthing than munching.”

I should have demanded she tube feed him to get nutrients in him—we’d had to do this before—but I didn’t.

She didn’t offer.

A missed opportunity that might have made the difference. One that still haunts me.

Like the memory, captured by my phone camera, of pressing my forehead to his, thinking he’d be just fine . . . yet feeling somehow that time was precious—not to be missed.

The ultra soft fur of his head pressing forward and into my skin. His little sigh—more exhale than sigh, but still makes me smile.

And if I close my eyes, I can still inhale his unique baby goat smell mixed with the fresh basil I’d left laying on the kitchen counter and the scent of rosemary wafting in the open window.

Watching him laying in the sun, sleeping peacefully brought me so much JOY.

He shouldn’t have suffered.

He shouldn’t have died.

But he did.

And his passing cracked open a crazy grief in me.

Grief over him but perhaps past grief of mine that I allowed out in that one unguarded moment in time.

Holding his lifeless body, wrapped in a white towel, the vet long gone . . . and whispering good-bye with such heartache.

I knew I wasn’t just about to bury him.

I was saying good-bye to a version of me as I lowered him into the hole I’d quietly dug at dusk.

I loved him alone.
I buried him alone.

The Frenchman never met him.

Never did I pause to doubt if that was enough,
that I couldn’t go through that again . . .

Never did it occur to me that I should stop rescuing because the flip side of the love coin is so much sorrow.

But here I sit at the kitchen counter—fresh basil and rosemary growing in matching clay pots to my right—and a charming, new-to-me rescue—a baby lamb this time, just steps away chomping on some hay.

And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you read all the way to the hole I dug at dusk—then you're my kind of person.

And you already understand the essence of what A Girl & Her Goat is.

Not every month brings a Bisous heartbreak. Some months bring chaos wearing hooves. A rooster with opinions. A lamb who has decided the kitchen belongs to her. My Frenchman watching all of it unfold and never once complaining.

But some months bring the harder, quieter stories. The ones that ask something of you. The ones that stay.

You just met Bisous.

There are twenty-two more, every one of them still here—busting gates, stealing each other's food, waiting on the hay truck.

This is how you stay close to them.

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