When I was a wee lad in Perryton, TX**, my best friends (two Mexican brothers whose parents may or may not have been legal) one day suddenly had a goat in their back yard.

This particular night, I was hanging out with them as I did nearly every day, and we were probably discussing various places around town we could go that featured structures suitable for use lofty intellectual concepts such as cool bike-riding places we hadn’t yet fully explored. You know, lots of hills to jump, etc.

Much to my shock one night their dad came outside and tackled the goat, and shoved a huge knife into its throat. It seemed to take an awfully long time to stop screaming and trying to stand up. I hadn’t realized that the goat was food. I just figured it was an unusual and somewhat impractical pet.

They ate most of the goat.

There’s no moral to this story; it’s just my random recollection.

** I was whelped in Small Town America. It was, on balance, a fucking nightmare, and I remain deeply suspicious of people who assert that small towns are cozy little idyllic havens of wholesome, neighborly live-and-let-live goodness.