Dead Goats and Blood Sausage

Yesterday the heavens tried to compensate for the previous dry weather by throwing half an ocean at me.  Naturally this was the night I chose to have dinner with friends.  Despite urgent representations from their lawyers I'm going to stick with that definition although I am legal obliged to publicly affirm that the designation of Amanda and Dan as "friends" should in no way be considered to carry a legal obligation to associate with me in public in the future nor to provide me with company, advice, guidance, support or CPR should any of the preceding become necessary.  Once I had signed the paperwork and my security deposit had cleared we settled down for pre dinner drinks.

The conversation, as is traditional, started with the minute dissection of the moral, intellectual and character flaws of mutual acquaintances who weren't present.  Once these necessary preliminaries were dealt with the conversation quite naturally turned to the circumstances under which you can legally kill a goat.

Apparently, if your are on your own property and that property is enclosed you are legally entitled to kill any goat that wanders on to it as long as that goat is not marked, tagged or branded.  Dan raised concerns as to how this dovetailed with the legislation restricting the discharge of firearms in residential areas but we eventually agreed that there was nothing to stop you from spearing or clubbing the goat to death or, for that matter, simply running it down with your car.

You cannot, however, kill a goat farmer who wanders onto your enclosed property.  Indeed a drover is legally entitled to enter your enclosed property as long as it is for the purpose of retrieving animals that have strayed.  Further examination of the legislation confirmed that this stipulation applied to drovers, farmers, herdsmen and anyone else who molested animals on a professional or semi professional basis.  This led to a vigorous debate as to whether a farmer could enter your enclosed property for the purposes of retrieving a goat that you had just legally killed.  Dan, with visions of a goat dinner receding over the horizon, argued for the negative but we finally came down in favour of the farmer on that one.

The odd thing about the legislation is that it applies specifically to goats.  Apparently sheep, cattle, horses, alpacas and small children can roam your enclosed property with impunity even if they haven't been marked, tagged or branded.  Amanda suspected there must be some cultural or economic reason behind the singling out of goats in this fashion but I rather suspect that this was slipped into the law by a nineteenth century legislator to retrospectively justify an unfortunate goat related incident on his property.

With the goat situation resolved to our mutual satisfaction (although I wouldn't want to be the farmer trying to retrieve a dead goat from Dan's enclosed property) we took advantage of a break in the showers to cross the road and eat tapas.  I was a little unsure about the tapas but once Amanda assured me that it did (or at least could) contain dead animals I was on board.  Since this was a Spanish restaurant I ordered a pina colada to wash it all down (I'm not sure if that makes any sense).

We sat outside watching the sights of Glebe and occasional torrents of rain.  We were deeply concerned that we wouldn't order enough food so we ordered about twice as much as we actually needed.  We were still making comments about how we could order more if we needed it when it became painfully apparent that we didn't have the stomache capacity to eat what was already in front of us.  The chorizo in wine was a great success but the blood sausage was an unfortunate choice (of mine).  It managed to be both bland and unpleasant, a combination I would not have thought possible.

Conversation, which until then had been a scintillating insight into the minutiae of goat murder, flagged as more and more of our bodily resources had to be allocated to the simple task of digestion.  We finally acknowledged defeat when Dan slipped into a food coma and I burst into tears at the thought of eating one more slice of chorizo.  Up in the eaves a pigeon had been watching us with increasing contempt and now rather pointedly went to sleep.  At this stage a close was called to proceedings.  Amanda used various sharp things to revive Dan (he was driving her home) and we staggered out into the night.

Things I learnt from this evening?  Under certain circumstances I'm entitled to kill a goat.  Also apparently I like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.