Wide-eyed

I woke up at 6:30 this morning to a rooster crowing, and spent an hour while everyone else slept hanging out on a verandah overlooking a foggy valley with a goat for company. Very sweet & surprisingly beautiful goat with great floppy black ears- whenever I failed to pay sufficient attention to her she stomped and edged closer until her face was in my lap. Great goat-brown eyes staring upwards til I gave her another pat. Attempting to do morning stretches (I'm feeling quite healthful out here apparently) with a coquettish goat nibbling your knees is quite distracting.

The goat wound up in this intense stand-off with one of the many dogs through the kitchen door. They didn't break eye-contact for about half an hour.

The local health hazard is the insanely cute caramel-coloured puppy, all crinkle-browed and concerned looking. Impossible to walk past the puppy without being distracted from whatever it was you were doing. People are found paralysed by the cuteness, drawn off-path to the one true task of rubbing the perfectly hand-sized little belly as paws scratch ecstatically at air.