But Rita has other plans. She’s spotted the tunnel and charges toward it, dragging the rest of the ribbon like a banner. For a brief moment, I think she might actually complete part of the course.
Then she gets halfway through the tunnel and stops. Just... stops.
“Is she stuck?” someone asks.
“She’s not stuck,” Callie says. “She’s... thinking.”
“In the middle of a tunnel?”
“She’s thoughtful.”
That’s when we hear the sound of fabric ripping. Rita emerges from the other end of the tunnel with the entire inner lining in her mouth, the tunnel collapsing behind her.
“That’s destruction of property!” the judge shouts.
“That’s Rita,” Callie and I say in unison.
The judge storms over, clipboard clutched like aweapon. Rita, viewing this as a threat, does what Rita does best. She charges. The headbutt catches the judge in the stomach, sending her stumbling backward into the pause table, which collapses.
The entire crowd gasps. Multiple phones are out.
“Your goat assaulted me!” the judge sputters from the wreckage.
“She was defending herself,” Callie says weakly, trying to hold her laughter. “You approached aggressively. With a clipboard.”
Security arrives and we’re escorted from the premises. Rita trots alongside us, still dragging the tunnel lining and looking pleased with herself.
“Lifetime ban,” the security guard informs us. “You and the goat. From all fairground events. Forever.”
“That seems excessive,” Callie says, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
“Your goat ate evidence, destroyed equipment worth three hundred dollars, and assaulted a nationally certified judge.”
“Allegedly assaulted.”
“We have seventeen videos from different angles.”
As we’re walking to the parking lot, officially banned, Callie’s still laughing. “We just... got banned... from goat agility,” she gasps. “That’s a thing that happened.”
“It’s going on our permanent record,” I tell her.
“Good. I want it on my tombstone. ‘Here lies Callie Thompson. Banned from competitive goat sports.’”
She’s beautiful when she laughs like this, really laughs, without any weight on her shoulders. The sun catches her hair and her eyes are bright with tears from laughing.
I reach for her hand to help her up from where she’s doubled over, but Rita chooses that moment to escape again, yanking the lead so hard that Callie needs both hands to control her.
“Oh no you don’t,” Callie says, wrestling Rita back. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”
Rita bleats and goes for my shoelaces.
“She has excellent taste,” Callie says, getting Rita under control.
“In shoelaces?”
“In partners.” She grins at me. “Thanks for this. Even if it was a disaster.”
“Best disaster ever.”
