You don't have to be crazy to live on my farm, but it helps.
As if a wife and kid aren't enough to make a farmer crazy (They get too easily attached to the livestock: it's hard to butcher Wilbur the Pig when he's wearing a cute little polka-dotted bow tie and walking on a leash.), having herds of insane animals roaming all over the back 40 doesn't improve my mental state much.
If you need a critter with a mental illness, you can find it at DeWitt Farms. Should I start with Floyd the Cat, who developed claustrophobia after clawing a hole into the warm duct vents of my house and getting stuck? Nothing helps a farmer sleep good at night like a frantic house cat squalling underneath his bedroom.
Or should we start with Dixie, the psychotic serial killer dog who ruthlessly and with no remorse will murder any chicken that steps outside the chicken yard? One of these days Dixie will probably get the electric chair, or at least the electric fence.
Take a step or two outside my backyard and there is a rabbit condo where all the bunnies are delusional and think they are movie stars. I guess it doesn't help that the crazy wife and kid named them Drake and Josh, and Thelma and Louise, and, of course, Spiderman and his girlfriend, Mary Jane.
Right outside the backyard fence you'll find the pigmy goat Horatio, who suffers from a rare form of goat nymphomania. Horatio, coincidentally, stinks like a Billy goat, but the ladies still love him.
There's Snowflake, the baby goat who is bipolar. One minute he's cute and cuddly and lets the kids pet him. The next he's twisting and bucking like a bronco. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't let the kids try to ride him.
And then there's Sam, the goat with multiple personalities who is quite certain he's a dog. And a chicken. And a cow. Depending on who's getting fed at the time.
But time means nothing to these animals. The chickens now suffer from sleep deprivation disorder once I put that automatic light on in the hen house. When the light comes on at 4 a.m., they start crowing and laying eggs and don't stop until I turn off the light switch.
Speaking of eggs, do your hens lay golf balls, too? Or am I losing my mind?
Of course, I couldn't forget about the calf with the identity crisis who has absolutely no idea what her name is. The kid calls her Olga, my mother named her Nettie, and I think she looks more like a Bessie. Luckily, she'll answer to anything if you've got a feed bucket or a milk bottle in your hand.
You might want to stay away from T-Bone and Hamburger, the two feeder cows. For some strange reason T-Bone and Hamburger are paranoid and they always think someone is trying to kill them and eat them.
I know by now you're probably thinking that it's not the animals who are crazy, but me. That's absurd. I'm as sane as they come. Honestly.
If you want crazy, the worst mental case on the farm would have to be Elvis, the duck, who died recently. Or did he? Come to think of it, there have been some reported Elvis sightings.
But then again, you can't believe everything the rooster tells you.