Goat Hits Snooze, Wakes Up to an Empty Pasture and Several Questions

A LaughParty comic take.

A LaughParty comic take. Everything below is invented for laughs. No goats were harmed or fact-checked.

Somewhere on a hillside that may or may not exist, a goat we will call Gerald opened one eye, then the other, then both again for good measure. The sun was high. The grass was quiet. And the forty-two goats who had been sleeping beside him were nowhere to be seen.

"I closed my eyes for five minutes," Gerald told no one, because there was no one. Witnesses, had there been any, would have noted that Gerald's five minutes began around dawn and ended shortly after lunch.

Gerald's first instinct was denial. Perhaps the herd was hiding. He checked behind a rock. He checked behind a slightly larger rock. He checked inside a bucket, which was ambitious. The bucket contained a beetle, who also claimed to have no idea where everyone went.

His second instinct was to eat something, because he is a goat and that is how goats process emotion. He ate some clover, a fence post and roughly a third of a sign that previously read 'Please Close the Gate.' It now read 'Please Clo,' which felt like a cry for help.

Back at the herd, meanwhile, morale was high and attendance was low. The lead goat, a stern nanny named Doris, had performed the morning headcount with the confidence of someone who cannot count past seven. "Everybody's here," she announced, gesturing broadly at a crowd that could have been anyone. Nobody questioned her. Questioning Doris is how you end up at the back of the line, near the thistles.

By mid-afternoon Gerald had moved from panic to bargaining. He promised the universe he would go to bed earlier. He promised to stop staying up late headbutting the moon's reflection in the water trough. He promised to finally learn which bush was the itchy one, instead of guessing every time.

Then came a breakthrough: hoofprints. Hundreds of them, all heading north. Gerald followed them with the grim determination of a detective in a raincoat, if the detective also stopped every ten feet to nibble a dandelion.

He found the herd at sunset, gathered around a fresh patch of grass. They looked up. He looked at them. A long, meaningful silence followed. Then Doris said, "Oh, were you not here?"

Gerald did not dignify this with a response. He walked to the middle of the group, lay down and announced that tomorrow, someone else could be in charge of the alarm. He was asleep within minutes. The herd, for once, decided to wait.

Experts in entirely fictional goat behavior say the lesson is universal. Every group chat, office and family road trip has a Gerald. And every Gerald deserves someone who can count past seven.

Inspired by Goat slept in and left behind by herd.