The straw julebukk on our Christmas tree. |
Uzzi and I can hardly wait till Christmas! There’s a package with our names on it under the tree. The wrapping is pretty and the box smells goooood, like homemade goat treats. Yum!
There’s a Yule goat in our Christmas tree too, a real straw julebukk from far-off Sweden. Mom bought it at eBay after Fayre (she’s a Portuguese Water Dog) ate our old one. Bad dog! I bet that Portuguese Water Dog in the White House doesn’t eat the Obamas’ Yule goat—if anybody ate our julebukk it should have been Uzzi and me!
Uzzi dresses up to go julebukking.  |
We goats go wild for Christmas trees. Mom and Dad pick a wild, shaped-by-nature Christmas tree. Hank the Beagle says in Minnesota they harvested a tiny tree that the snowplow wings would’ve sheared off. One year a tall, skinny black spruce in their bog toppled over and Dad cut out the very top for their Christmas tree.
It had little globs of resin on its branches and when Mom dropped beads of resin on the woodstove, the smell in the house was heavenly sweet. Here we have an Eastern red cedar Christmas tree. That’s because they grow everywhere in the Ozarks.
Mom’s horsey friend, Melba Mullins says red cedar’s strange aroma is, “the smell of
The sheep get in the Holiday spirit too! |
Christmas in the Ozarks” but Dad says cedars smell like dog pee.
Our Christmas tree is small and skinny because Mom and Dad cut trees from a bigger thicket so that thinning helps the others grow big and strong. Also, thanks to Fayre, the ornament eater, it has to be small enough to sit on the kitchen counter. Its branches are pretty wimpy, so our tree is decorated with one string of blinking lights, dainty foil garland and ornaments shaped like sheep, horses, donkeys, a moose and (of course) goats.
After Christmas, Mom removes the decorations and we goats get to eat the tree!
Another Christmas custom at our house is visiting the Caroling of the Goats at Karin Christensen’s Biology of the Goat Web site. We watch and listen to it lots of times a day. Take a look and show it to your goats. It’s fun!
Merry Christmas from your favorite Arkansas Nubians: Uzzi and me!
