I was at a customers house today working. I had finished most the work and needed to run the water a bit, so was sitting in the kitchen chatting with her killing time. She has a full farm with many animals, horses, goats, sheep, cows, etc. It’s one of the few farms left in what is steadily becoming the expanding suburbia of Boston.
While I was talking to her the phone rang and she took the call so I got to listen to half the conversation with near yelling noises coming from the other side. It was very difficult to not fall over laughing while she was responding. My customer is a very down to earth person, comes of as pretty rural but is also very informed and educated. She has a PHD in biology.
The opening responding line covered the conversation. Paraphrasing as I unfortunately didn’t record it word for word. ‘So let me get this straight you drove by last week and saw my goats having intercourse in the field near the road. You were so offended you have taken the time to look up my number and prepared a ridiculous rant and demands that I make sure this doesn’t happen again. They are animals and do animal things I suppose I could ask my goats not to have sex but I can’t promise they will listen.’
It was about a 20 minute conversation. We discussed it afterward. There was more back and forth. My customer pretty much telling the lady she was ridiculous. They lady insisting she had some right to be concerned because she had children in the car. The caller ended up getting very upset and made threats of calling the police and ‘discussing this at the town meeting’.
This apparently isn’t the only time she received such a call. She’s had other wonderful complaints such as ‘your cows keep staring at me’ and ‘You need to make the fences on your property higher your horses might jump over them and hurt somebody.’
I can’t fathom what world these people must live in. It boggles my mind that people have time and willingness to broadcast their stupidity.
One of our neighbors got a call from a fellow neighbor. Her complaint was that the neighbors husband had gotten off his tractor in the field and relieved himself. The neighbor thought about and call back to ask, “my husband is working in the back field how could you tell he was relieving himself?”
The answer she got, “I had to use my field glasses to tell what he was doing?”
Times have changed. Heck, it was only twenty years ago that my nephew pointed out a bull and a cow in the midst, and yelled “They’re playing leap frog!”
OK, people, let’s calm down. You know perfectly well that when children see any sort of creature doing anything that even slightly suggests sex, well, the children will rip off their clothing and start orgying right then and there. Obviously none of you are responsible parents who care enough to protect your children from such a nasty fate.
When you just explain things as they, uh, come up, kids aren’t that interested in sex. The other night my 6yo saw the word “boner” on The Simpsons and asked what it meant. I explained, and she was like, “Yeah, whatever, back to watching TV.”
People need to stop freaking out about their kids finding out about gasp real life.
But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a kid see something or experience something and be totally cool about it UNTIL the parent freaks out and has a total meltdown, in which case the kid is suddenly traumatized by the event.
One day, shortly after I started my current job, I received no less than six voice mail messages telling me that something needed to be done about ‘my’ horses. Seems that (despite my ongoing demands that they NOT do this) our fundraising folks had taken a large-ish group of bible school kids (and their adult companions) on a tour of our pasture, where one of our horses was… mmm… getting acquainted with a new female arrival. Now, all our male horses are gelded, so it’s more like he was going through the motions (and it’s the only time we’ve ever had that problem), but that was quite enough for the visitors and their tour guides.
When the kids at work have either sexual or anger issues with another kid (ie, they’re constantly trying to hook up with or beat the crap out of the other person- and no, these are not always mutually exclusive), we put them on what’s called ‘peer isolation’- they’re not allowed to have any contact with that peer. Some of the offended callers actually told me I needed to keep the male and female horses in separate pastures (reasonable if you have intact horses AND the financial means to divide up your pastures, neither of which apply here), and I couldn’t help joking for MONTHS about putting the horses on PI if they didn’t turn their behavior around. :rolleyes:
