Mercy Killing

Daddy didn’t let them kid in the pens because of the mess, and not all mothers eat their afterbirth. Under the metal barn, flies teemed over pellets and urine. Four rows of silver eight-byeight-foot pens stood on packed dirt. I followed Daddy between rows to the stale hay where the brown goat had kidded during the dark morning hours. Dogs trailed us with wet noses and hot, thick breath. They stunk, covered in their oils and filth. Tubby, the Great Pyrenees, stayed in the pastures with his herd. At the end of the barn, the brown doe licked the new kid clean. The white-bodied kid nursed, butting into her recipient mother’s warm bag for milk. The kid’s umbilical cord—longer and thicker than usual—curled into the old hay. Her hind end seemed heavy and oddly angled. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Daddy said. We stared openmouthed with our hands gripping the top of the wire fence. The kid’s two back legs held up two other legs that didn’t quite reach the ground. She had two small tails, two ill-formed butts and vaginas—shallow slits of pink skin. I climbed over and picked her up, holding her out at face level. Her thin ribs pulsed with breathing. Her thick, purple umbilical cord wound to the ground. She held still in my hands. I saw that her eyes were the color of walnuts, and then I understood that her intestines, attached to her umbilical cord, were spilling out of her. She had too many. I turned her around, looking at her legs, her tails, and all her tiny hooves that hadn’t yet hardened. She made my stomach hurt. “I don’t think she can use the bathroom,” I said. “I’ve never seen that,” Daddy said. His forehead wrinkled. Hungry goats bayed from the pens and pastures around us. I put the kid down. She jumped with spunk, even under the weight of her absorbed flushtwin. She was oblivious to what she’d be in a day’s cruel time. Without being able to use to the bathroom, she’d poison herself. We moved flush kids and their recipient mothers to the clean pens under the barn once they kidded, but we never moved the six-legged kid and her recip. There wasn’t much point. Daddy and I found the six-legged kid before the morning feeding. We fed twice a day, and once we finished the morning round, it already seemed time for the evening round. The feed sacks sat stacked on pallets under the barn. Daddy ordered feed by the ton—a bill we had a