Jan. 6: Getting My Goat

The whole goat thing among my coworkers arose when I was editing a college psychology course for a previous employer and noticed some curious statistics that were being quoted, such as: 

• Each year, over 6000 people are traumatized by goats in the United States alone, and

• If a child is traumatized by a goat before age five, he/she is five times more likely to become some form of social deviant.

Now, I don't know about you, but I had never heard of childhood goat trauma, and those stats, and the writing, sounded awfully fishy. Uh, goaty. Ungulate-y. 

I went to the website from which the writer had extracted the stats, and poked around. As I suspected, it was not a scholarly site at all. It was a joke. That became abundantly clear once I saw this page. The word spread and it became a cautionary tale about double- and triple-checking facts. So now, goats are a thing for a select few of my friends. 

And so, by popular demand, I give you… a goat. Here is the photo I was painting from. I don't think of many painting titles, but this one just came to me. I call it "Goat Toward the Light." 
As Goat is my witness, I hereby vow: There will be more goats.