Vaughan Gunson: Goat number 5 - confronting the ineffable mystery of life

The goat was always going to end up on the dinner table, but time had passed. Months turned into a year, then another year. And now the day had come, writes Vaughan Gunson. Photo / Getty Images

LIFE, ART AND EVERYTHING

I met a good keen man. He could have walked out of the pages of Barry Crump's classic 1960 book.

He wore a black T-shirt with the cartoon-like picture of a boar with tusks on the front.

He was in his 20s, with downy stubble on his chin. His hair was brown and loosely curly, in between short and long.

There were fine specks of blood on his forearms. We'd spoken on the phone, he was very polite, old-fashioned even.

So I already knew his name when he stuck his arm out the window of his small truck to shake my hand. "Josh," he said. "Good to meet you."

I pointed up the drive to where he needed to go. He was here to kill one of our goats and two of our neighbour's sheep.

The goat had a name, but with the decision to have it home killed, we'd taken to referring to it as goat number 5.

I don't believe the sheep had names.

We'd always meant to eat the goat, one of the offspring of our females when we were milking. But time had passed. Months turned into a year, then another year.

At least the goats were keeping the gorse under control. The goat poo I collected from their shelter was great for the compost. Our three castrated male goats were useful, I told myself.

We don't own the land they're on. We just have a generous arrangement with our neighbour.

With their sheep and cows, plus our goats, the grass this year was starting to get scarce. So some animals had to go.

I didn't enjoy pulling goat number 5 with a rope towards where Josh had parked his truck and trailer.

There were plastic barrels on the back of the truck and an ominous-looking crane with a large steel hook. The trailer was covered in a dark green tarp.

As I approached, I had a flashback of one of my earliest memories, at an uncle's old farmhouse near Te Aroha. On that day, three sheep were killed and hung up over a tree branch to be skinned and gutted.

I remembered it being cold and grey.

The scene in my memory was like the brooding atmosphere in Vincent Ward's masterful 1984 film Vigil, set on an isolated North Taranaki farm.

That wet, dreary and cold New Zealand landscape, with lichen-covered fence posts and dead tree stumps, has always unsettled me.

Thankfully, on this day, when goat number 5 was to be killed, it was beautiful and sunny.

Josh came over, took the goat off my hands, grabbed it by the horns, rolled it on the ground, and while kneeling on its side quickly slit its throat—all before I had a chance to get away.

It was right that I watched though. I wasn't doing the deed, but I needed to accept responsibility for this animal's death. I bore witness to it at least.

From books I've read about different cultures around the world, I'm familiar with people saying a prayer when killing an animal.

In one memorable instance, from a memoir written by an Englishman living in rural Greece in the 1970s, four men stood together, singing a centuries-old song before a goat was killed.

That seems like an appropriate thing to do. Yet so far away from the ritual-less modern world most of us experience.

Josh stood beside me as the dying animal twitched on the ground. With his sharp-pointed knife in hand, he explained his technique. How immediately after slicing the throat, he dug deep into the spinal cord, ending it quickly.

It was the best way, he said.

As he looked at my ashen white face, he added that he killed each animal like it was his own.

His calm, polite voice was consoling. He seemed to accept that his job was to kill animals and provide a counselling service.

I was grateful.

Even without the ritual of prayer or song, we were two people previously strangers to each other bonding over the death of another living creature, confronting the ineffable mystery of life.