Don't Like To Mow?

Once upon a time a long long time ago in The Land Of Goats there was a feller named Haskel who sold goats. There was this other feller named Gus who didn't want to mow his grass. So, Gus decided to go to the Land Of Goats and find three goats to eat the grass. Gus looked over Haskel's goats thoroughly when he arrived in the Land Of Goats, and decided to buy a Billy goat named Billy, another goat named Sweet William, and a Nanny goat named Nanny.

After buying the goats, Gus loaded the three goats into his pickup truck and headed for home. Billy had eaten the truck bed liner by the time Gus reached the forks of the road. Nanny had eaten the spare tire, and Sweet William was hanging over the tailgate and he had eaten the taillights. Lo and behold, the county sheriff just happens to be cruising down the old gravel road that Gus was traveling. He turned on the flashing blue lights and siren and pulled Gus over. "What's the matter?" Gus asked as soon as the sheriff made it to the window of the pickup truck. "It's like this Gus," the sheriff replied in an annoying voice. "No one runs around in an old beat up pickup truck with their taillights completely gone, hauling three goats. Just think, someone could rear end you and could hurt those poor little goats."

Gus tried to explain that he did have taillights when he left home, but the sheriff shrugged and said, "Sure, sure, a likely story. Everyone has some kind of story to tell, but yours beats all, because I can see with my own two eyes you don't have any taillights.” The sheriff wrote a ticket for driving a pickup truck with no taillights. “Really, if you were going to lie, you could have thought of a better lie than that to tell. Just for that I'm writing you a ticket for 500.00 for driving without taillights and for endangerment to these three goats.

Gus drove on home bewildered. He let the goats out of the pickup truck. Anything that ate a truck bed liner, a spare tire, and the taillights, surely would eat grass, he thought.

Around noon Gus looked out the kitchen window fully expecting every blade of grass to be gone. But that wasn't the case. The phone rang and it was Gus's neighbor, Peggy Jean, and she was raving mad. She was yelling and sputtering until Gus could barely understand her. Gus did catch the word goat, though, and knew then he was in double trouble three times over.

Then Gus heard a loud knock at the door. It sounded as if someone was beating on the door with a baseball bat. It wasn't a baseball bat it was a Billy club. It was the sheriff pounding away on the door.

"All Right Gus," the sheriff roared. "Enough is enough. Your three goats wandered over on to Miss Peggy Jean's property, they ate the wires off her husband's tractor, ate the wheels off of Miss Peggy Jean's prize Go-Cart. They ate all her prize petunias, they ate her rose bushes she had planed to show in the Miss American Beauty Rose Contest next month. They ate her blackberry briar patch, her cranberry bush, her crab apple tree, and ate every strawberry in the strawberry patch, and demolished her vegetable garden. But worse of all, they were glaring in the front room window, and scared poor Miss Peggy Jean out of her wits. She thought old Satan himself was glaring through that window at her. But the straw that broke the camel's back was when they ate her Internet cable. You ain't getting off so easy this time. You're going to court Gus, and I'm taking you in and you're staying in jail until your trial comes up."

Gus's wife was disgusted with the entire situation packed all her clothes, took Gus's old beat up pickup truck, drove to the bank and cleaned out the checking and savings accounts. She put the farm up for sale with a realtor, then headed out of town toward Wyoming. Gus never heard from her or saw her again.

Six weeks later Gus's trial finally came up. The judge doesn't let Gus say one word in his own defense. He just pronounced Gus guilty of all charges; give him twenty years in jail and a 10,000.00 fine for destruction of property. Since Gus had been in jail for six weeks, the goats died of starvation, so the Humane Society brought charges against Gus for cruelty to animals. The judge said there was no excuse for Gus letting the goats die of starvation, so fined Gus 25,000.00 on the cruelty to animals charge and gave him an additional fifty years in prison.

No one ever goes to the Land Of Goats anymore. They all came to the conclusion, it's better to mow the grass than to be eaten up with big fines plus being the guest of the state prison system.