Lost and Found

We had an Easter mystery yesterday. 

Since Jip has been bothering the little goats, we have tried to keep him separate as much as possible, tethering him in the front yard instead of letting him loose in the back pasture. He's been behaving himself, and because of the rain yesterday afternoon, we thought it might be okay to let him loose with the goats while we spent time at my in-laws' house. 

G went over to check on them later in the afternoon and called saying that he could only find one of the baby goats. 

Our first thought was that Jip had killed them, but but there were no bodies or remains anywhere in the pasture. Our second thought was that he had eaten them. But how could he have eaten both of them in such a short amount of time and not left any evidence behind? That must mean they escaped the pasture. We found two areas of the fence where they could have snuck out.

Still, no evidence of kids outside the pasture. And surely they would've stuck close to their mom, right?

Here's my searching buddy:

After searching 40 minutes with no sign of them, I decided to recheck a couple places in the pasture.

The first spot I checked was the fence partly covering the garage window (the right side of the picture). 

We had installed that the first week we got goats because the goats thought their reflections were other goats and they wouldn't go inside even in bad weather. Doesn't it look like a kid could sneak in there? G and I had both looked behind there twice, but we hadn't used a flashlight. I use my phone's flashlight to check way down the far end of the fence. Sure enough I saw some furry little legs!

Together G and I unstacked enough of the firewood to pull the top of the fence away from the garage to guide the babies out of there. Both of the missing kids were tucked in the very end of the fence. 

Whew! 

They were wet and cold but otherwise okay. They were very happy to get back to their mom, and their mom was very happy to be reunited with them. Our guess is that Jip chased them and in their fear they discovered that hidey-hole.