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They flatter themselves who hold that I was unaware of people all those terms; that had I ever seen normal men I'd have yearned most miserably to leave the herd. The truth is, Max made no particular secret of my existence; people knew of me long before those articles in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. Indeed, the New Tammany S.P.C.A., interpreting their jurisdiction widely, moved more than once in my "behalf," and only the direct intervention of the Chancellor (who, let us say, felt guilty about Max's dismissal) prevented their plucking me from my family. Every weekend there were students and faculty along the fence. I was as pleased to see them as were all my friends; we frisked for their amusement. If in time Max forbade me to approach them, it was not out of fear that I might defect: he knew I'd not swap my liberty for the pitiful estate of folk who teetered on two legs, reeked of unnatural scents, bound themselves in layer after layer of cloth, and were never allowed the run of the pastures. What he feared — alas and rightly — was that if they didn't poison me, as they did with tobacco a Schwarzhals doeling I once knew, they'd corrupt me with bad examples. A day came when I chafed at this restriction: Max thought me more innocent than I knew I was, and hence like every youngster I underestimated my susceptibility.
How it would have alarmed him to know my sophistication at fourteen. From simple observation I'd learned to tell men from women, even when the latter wore trousers and sheared their fleece. To be sure, I had yet to guess the measure of human frailty: one whose brothers became fathers before their first birthday, and who has himself in play been humping does since he could crawl, can scarcely feature a beast that may not mate until its thirteenth year. But I well understood why their keepers never scrupled to let human bucks and does run together, and why they all were so ashamed of their bodies that they mated in darkness. More than one night (unknown to Max) pairs of people stole into our buckwheat meadow: if I heard them crashing through the straw — as often I did, their attempts at silence were that clumsy — I'd slip from the pound to watch their performance from some near hiding-place. When I learned how night-blind they were and how poor of smell and hearing, I made bold to come almost upon them, not to miss a word of their curious bleating — and never was found out. By this means I discovered that the brutes were hairiest in the few places where goats were bald, and bald almost everywhere else, where fleece is most needed (my own angora wrapper I regarded as a part of myself, it was so seldom removed). I had assumed that all the men I saw were geldings, since they ran with the women and never smelled lustfuclass="underline" now I learned that neither sex rutted that strongly. Small wonder. Who could mount, for example, a monster with two heads instead of one — which heads moreover sprout from its backside? Just that enormous seemed the first female human I saw unclothed, with her queer small udders at the wrong end of her trunk. Yet praise be to Nature, that finds every dragoness a dragon, all praise to Instinct for making worms love other worms — she managed a feeble coupling after all with her hairless buck, and my education took a great step forward.
But see me stray from the point, quite as I came to stray from the herd and leave behind my good judgment. These espials bear on what's to come — let them show in any case that I was less naïve than gentle Max supposed. For I also understood by the age of fourteen that he was some sort of human himself, despite his long white curls and splendid odor; and further that, for all the herd accepted me as a brother, I was no Rock Alpine, Murciana, or Schwartzenberg-Gluggisberger, but a breed unto myself. It was I the people came to see, I think I always knew that. My pals grew up faster and were nimbler on their feet; after a year they joined the grownups and were replaced by new kids, while I remained season after season in the play-pound. They were stronger, more handsome, and (pass them) more predictable. I was merely clever — yet dull enough to think myself their better on that account. I alone could climb a tree as well as gnaw its bark, pick my own lice, imitate any sound I heard, and transform a herdsman's crook into a weapon. We all loved tricks and stunts, but they hadn't by half my invention, and in the whole of goatdom no kid save Billy Bocksfuss ever tricked himself.
In our play-yard were a number of barrels and boards that we used for Dean of the Hill. To entertain my admirers I would set two planks against opposite sides of a barrel-top; Redfearn's Tommy, my special friend, would scramble up from one side and I from the other, and we'd wrestle for possession of the summit. One weekend morning, encouraged by applause, I raised the Hill to a height of two barrels, and thence to two barrels and a box, which I climbed with great difficulty from the side. The plankway was too steep then for the others; they could only adore me from below as I teetered on my perch; presently they feigned indifference, butted one another on the ground as if they didn't hear my crowing, or the crowd's approval. But I knew their hearts were filled with envy. Redfearn's Tom, especially, craved to join me: "Come, Tom!" I called, and he would pick his way up the steep board until he lost his footing. The humans took up my taunt: "Come, Tom! Come, Tom!" My poor brown buddy hurled himself up the barrel-side, fell back in the mud, hurled himself again. I mocked his bleating; he redoubled his efforts; my tower shook. "Come, Tom!" I cried. And I found myself making the peculiar roaring noise I'd heard humans make: "Ha ha ha! Come, Tommy! Ha ha ha!" The word laughter was not yet in my vocabulary; I'd often mimicked its sound, but now I understood its cause and use. Inspired, I made water upon my friend. "Ha ha ha!" we all laughed as he sprang away.
I heard Max call from the barn-door: "Na, you Bill." His voice was stern; "Come down off," he ordered, and I conceived a queer new notion: he was jealous. The onlookers hooted: though I had not heard that sound before, I grasped its import at once and found it no chore to echo. What's more, it suggested my last and grandest stunt: rising up on my knees I cupped hands to mouth and did a perfect imitation of Max's shophar.
"Verboten!" he shouted, clutching at his beard, shaking his crook at me.
It was the peril-word. At once every goat round about raised head from browsing; years of training made me feel seized by that word as by a hand; my senses rang. But where was the danger? The humans were with me; they recommenced their laughter, and so again and again I sent the buck-horn's call across the fields.
"Te-roo-ah! Te-roooo-ah!"
Alarm and summons together drove the goats wild: they leaped and cried and crashed against their fences. The does all called for their kids, the kids for their dams — I heard Mary bleat for me from her stall. The big bucks stamped in their pens and plunged about; Redfearn's Tom tore between Max and the barrels. There stood our keeper shouting, "Verboten!" but the summons came from Billy Bocksfuss, Dean of the Hill!
My next "Te-roo-ah!" resolved Tom's doubts: I that had been his playmate was now his keeper and must be obeyed. As before he threw himself up against the barrels, frantic to reach me, and now the others followed his example. Hadn't I gulled them, "Ha ha ha." And then my tower came a-topple.