There are moments in life that define you.
Your wedding day.
The birth of your children.
Standing on a cliff looking for puffins in sideways rain.
And apparently, announcing to your family that a goat has sexy eyes.
I would like the record to show that this was not a carefully considered opinion.
It was not a declaration of intent.
It was not the beginning of a scandal.
It was simply a sentence that escaped my mouth before my brain had appointed a responsible adult to supervise it.
The setting was a petting farm.
An actual petting farm.
Not one of those places future historians of my internet activity might imagine after reading this essay.
At the time I had what can only be described as Irish twins. Eleven months between my eldest daughter and son. One was a determined toddler. The other was a determined baby determined to do everything the toddler was doing.
I was surviving on approximately three hours of sleep and the stubborn belief that caffeine counted as a personality.
Whilst attempting to keep both children alive, we found ourselves watching a goat give birth.
Now, if you’ve never witnessed a mammal birth before, let me save you some time.
Nature is disgusting.
Beautiful.
Miraculous.
Important.
But also deeply, deeply disgusting.
Things emerged.
Things dangled.
Things were licked.
Things were eaten.
I learned far more about goats than I had ever intended to learn.
The nanny goat cleaned her kid with admirable professionalism.
The kid stood up on legs that appeared to have been assembled moments earlier.
The miracle of life unfolded before us.
Then the billy goat wandered over.
He looked directly at me.
I looked directly at him.
And somewhere inside my sleep-deprived brain, a perfectly reasonable thought formed.
Those are interesting eyes.
Goats have unusual pupils.
Vertical pupils.
Captivating eyes.
Striking eyes.
Memorable eyes.
Unfortunately, by the time the thought reached my mouth, all quality control had ceased operations.
“Goats have sexy eyes, don’t they?”
Silence.
My parents looked at me.
My partner looked at me.
The goat looked at me.
In fairness, he seemed quite pleased with the compliment.
“What?” I said.
“They do.”
I remember trying to explain myself.
The pupils.
The shape.
The intensity.
The fascinating way they seemed to look straight through you.
But the damage was done.
There are some statements that follow you forever.
This was one of them.
To this day I maintain that I was searching for a different word.
Captivating.
Enchanting.
Striking.
Anything except sexy.
But language is cruel.
When your brain is running on empty, it selects chaos.
And so, for the rest of my life, there will be people who remember me as the woman who once looked a goat in the eyes and delivered the most confusing compliment in agricultural history.
The goat, I suspect, remembers it differently.
He probably tells the story as the day a woman at a petting farm finally appreciated his efforts.

— Frost ❄️