In most homes the kitchen is a favorite gathering place, especially on cold winter days. Kids are welcome. This past week Nicole Schilling and Austin Tuel shared on Facebook a story of an extra kid in their Bristol Township kitchen. Bubbles, a four-legged kid, is camped out in the kitchen, at least for awhile.
Remember the cold and snow we were still struggling with last Monday? That’s when Austin found a surprise baby goat on the ground. The little one was very chilled but alive. Her mother was disinterested, and her twin had died. Of course Austin took the kid into the house, tube fed her, and put her in a warmer. What else could he do?
Nicole and Austin tube fed the kid for the first 24 hours until Austin coaxed her not to take a bottle, but to drink from a bowl like a dog. By then Bubbles was “running around pooping and peeing all over,” Nicole reported. Yes, in the kitchen, but that’s OK. “It’s always cause for much relief from us, that everything is working,” Nicole said.
Bubbles soon graduated from a box to a playpen. She gets to stay in the kitchen until the time comes there are other kids of the four-legged variety for her to play with. If there are two or more babies, the pen goes in the basement, “but with just one, she needs the interaction. Goats are very social and need to know some other critter is around. They will actually die of a broken heart, so to speak, if they are left alone,” Nicole shared.
About the name – “I have a habit of calling babies ‘Bubbles,’ my own human kids included. Usually the human kids name our baby goats. We’ve had Piss-ant (because he peed all the time), Spazzy (she was nuts), Blinky (bad eye, but still around as an adult and is doing great), Alyssa, Blackie, Whitey…there have been many. This time they stayed with Bubbles, because, as Ava put it, ‘She just looks like a Bubbles’.”
Welcome, Bubbles!
