James Lileks: Goaded Into a Glut of Goat-Getting

The Minneapolis/St Paul Star Tribune ^ | June 17, 2004 | James Lileks

[quidnunc]

If I were king of the forest, you could get windshield washer fluid at the gas pump. Imagine: no more than you need, no less. As we all know, that stuff is sold in big flabby bladders that always contain three cups more than you need, and this presents you with a dilemma. You can either throw the thing away right there at the station, which earns you glares from the eco-conscious. Or you can keep pouring until the excess runs out on the ground, turning into a nice blue stream of sweet-tasting, squirrel-killing poison. Neither works for me. So I throw the jug in the trunk, where it rolls around like a severed head every time I make a turn. And this drives me nuts. This really gets my goat.

The other day I not only had a loose bottle of wiper fluid in the back, but I had an empty propane tank. Port to stern, stern to port, bump and thump and thump and bump. Drove me nuts. Got my goat. Later that day I got a new tank of propane, which rolled back and forth like a cannonball on the deck of a ship. Now I had two rolling kegs bumping and thumping in the back. My goats had been gotten. Bring unto me mine goats, summon them in such numbers that the plains darken. With each thump, additional goats were fetched.

What, Daddee? Said the tot from the back seat.

That really gets my goat, I said. The rolling things. And for once in my life I thought: That makes no sense. I have no goat. I don't know why this would fetch a nonexistent goat, nor do I know what I would be expected to do with the goat once it had been gotten. Perhaps this is one of those strange lingering phrases from our Saxon heirs. Perhaps they once said "varlet, thou art summoning my donkey" or "sooth, thy deviltry doth yank my mule!" and others knew what they meant. "Hey, man, lay off, you're just yankin' his mule."

-snip-

[tsomer]

Oldest Living Confederate Widow, by Allen Gurganus recounts an explanation that makes reasonable sense to me. He claims that in the old days goats accompanied race horses as pets, to pacify their skittish and high strung natures on the eve of an event. Rivals would break into the barn and steal the goat. This made the horse unable to compete.