The neighbors had another round of baby goats not long ago. Chris got a call wondering if we might want to take a bottle baby. That might be fun, I thought... so we went over to see what the deal was. Sometimes a mother goat doesn't bother taking care of the kid, and most of the time, that is why some need to be bottle fed. This situation was different. This kid seemed to be paralyzed from the hips down and couldn't stand up on its back legs. They didn't know if the kid had some birth defect or had been stepped on. Aside from the unusable legs, the baby seemed healthy enough... but I felt like it would be a waste of time to take him on. Sometimes a "farmer" has to make a decision... that every life is not worth saving.

Our neighbor, Denise, couldn't quite give up on him yet, though, so she ended up bottle feeding him, then even got the mother to let him nurse... When I heard the news that he was strong enough to nurse on his own and seemed to be happily dragging himself around the pen, I felt a little guilty. Who was I to play God and decide this life was not worth giving a chance? I started having visions of a goat strapped into one of those doggie wheelchairs, pulling himself around the barnyard with his strong front legs, bringing joy and inspiration to visitors with his undefeatable spirit. A quick look online showed a doggie wheelchair ran about $200, but I bet we could rig one up somehow...

We stopped in for a visit this afternoon, and sorry to say, "Gimpy" (the name I tend to give all animals with leg handicaps) wasn't doing so well. Sure, he was hearty enough, thanks to Denise's attentive bottle feeding (he was no longer able to nurse), but he could no longer even get up on his front legs, and Denise had finally decided it was time to put the guy down. Sometimes, with animals (I'll not dive into the human aspect of this),  it is better to not "save" a life. Life is life, and death is part of life, and sometimes, maybe, we shouldn't fight so hard against it.