Island Grazing: Neoteny, Goats, and Spring on Martha's Vineyard
Surely there is no cuter harbinger of spring than a baby goat. Despite the coating of snow and ice still covering all surfaces, the possibility of spring took shape yesterday morning when I had the chance to visit island grazing's goats to photograph their new kids.
The trouble with goats is that they're goats - up for adventure.
Neoteny is a complex phenomenon that explains why a baby goat can both stand within the hour of its birth and also be so ridiculously cute that I want to smuggle one home and keep it a kid forever. Those big eyes! Those little noses! Those soft and fuzzy faces! That gamboling curiosity!
I had no idea when I arrived that I would be in for a surprise appearance, but this doe went in to labor while I was there (here she is at the start of it).
And for the duration - what seemed to me to be no more than twenty minutes total of restrained huffing from the first poke of a tiny goat hoof to the emergence of the slick, bleating quiver that was a new goat.
Here she is, all cleaned up! Instinct at work, she finds food at last.
When I finally pulled myself away from the magical morning, this goat was about to start labor too:
I never anticipated that my first birth shoot would be for a goat, but the experience was profound to this not-quite-city-girl, never watched a birth except my own (soundless video thereof - a surreal experience itself, for other reasons) . I didn't smuggle a kid home after all, but only just.