The professor and the dead goat.

We used to live next door to a professor. 

A professor of philosophy, in fact.

Yes, I know. It does my head in too. And, pretty sure it did his head in too.

Hang......on.....sorry, a professor of philosophy and MATHEMATICS. (Wayne just informed me of this little tit bit).

anyways....

Our bed room window was about a meter away from the joint fence to his property. So at 1.00 am in the morning when the classical music started up, it was destined to come adrift. To slide on the curve of the nightly sea wind, where the the mozart notes sifted through the branches of trees and slid through the cracks of the weatherboards, right into our sleepy ears.

Not so bad, really. If it had been some kind of  head-banging, up beat music..... Well, I am sure we would of been banging down the god damn door to complain. 

But. The only time we nearly banged down his door, was to do with a dead bloated goat. 

His goat. 

The one lonesome milking goat of his, had died. Yes, a professor and a goat resided in this old church next door. Oh......and his cat.

A man from the dead animal collecting service had come to... well..... Collect  the dead goat. But had been knocking on his door to speak to the professor, but had got no response. So he came next door to us. For some assistance.

Wayne said to the collector man that he will be in the house, you just have to knock loud! 

So Wayne went next door and knocked REALLY loud to demonstrate. We kinda had to do this every now and then anyway...... You know, to make sure he had not bellied up and bloated himself....... This time though, Wayne had to really almost bang down the door, well, because a dead bloated goat was involved, and there were issues around this as you can imagine.....

Dead goat owner finally came to the door. Eyes a squinting and grey hair all messed up.... He said "can I help you?" 

"It's me............... Wayne from next door!" 

He looked at Wayne a little closer and said "oh..... So it is"

What pursued was an argument between the professor and the dead animal collector about the fact the goat was already bloated, and the discussion of a fee to be incurred because of this fact, and how long it had been dead for.......and when the call was actually made to collect the carcass.. (they have to be freshies, you see). Professor thought it to be a tuesday, but in-fact it was thursday and the goat had died on the monday. NOT good news professor, not at all.

Wayne on the other hand was a chuckling away inside his head, at the brains and the brute trying to hold a conversation. Wicked man.

Eventually, Wayne assisted in helping the collector man put the bloated goat carefully....... so CAREFULLY.. ...in fear of a stinky explosion, into the truck. He was instructed that under no circumstances was it to hit the side of the truck on the swing throw type entry. That goat nearly hit the electricity lines, man.

The professor had already retreated inside.

We had drank milk from that goat. The professor used to bring it over for us. Some mushrooms one time too.... not the bestest idea to consume them though. But I won't be getting into that!  Wayne's girls used to wander over to watch the milking of this goat too. Poor goat. Poor professor. Yeah yeah yeah.

You see..... The times he came over, was agony. 

Every time he would leave, he got to the gate and remembered something else he wanted to say. This, could seriously happen five times before he actually, properly left. It was hilarious,   frustrating and sad.

Which brings me to the statement, that his head was done in. 

Wayne's daughter, Luca, was about 10. She used the word 'eighth's' in a sentence and the professor corrected her in some way about it. THREE HOURS later, he came over to apologize to her because she had in-fact been CORRECT. Yep. ( your a clever girl Lutey..)

We had no clue either way, but for 3 hours, this had been eating him up. 

My parents thought he was unique, and interesting and blah blah blah. Until they experienced his too-ing and fro-ing one day........ they looked incredulous! See.

So you know, how clever do you want to be anyway. I mean, far out Brussel sprout. I would rather not churn on the use and context of one word for three bloody hours.

You can become so far invested in your head that nothing makes sense on the outside. Not fun.

I mean the IQs of the collector brute far out weighed the IQs of the brainy professor when it came to basic calculations of how many days have to pass to have a bloated goat. Where as the professor had no idea what day it was of the week, or recognize his neighbor, and that his goat had even become bloated.

I mean, it makes you think....... well a little, not too much.

By the way, just to let you know. It takes three days for a goat to properly bloat.