Getting (rid of) your goat

My friend Barclay sent me this excerpt from a recent posting on eBay:

Featured by my auction house is a ART DECO World War II STANGL Goat Ram Unicorn looking vase . THe history of this vase is that it was in my grandmother's house since the War, and my father says he always remembered seeing it around. Now this is what happened. When my father married my mother, the mother in law, Evelyn, gave the green goat to my mother, Hilda. But Hilda always hated the green goat but knew since it was her husband's mother that she was stuck with it because every time Evvie came to visit she was asking where she was placing the green goat unicorn in the house. So Hilda always had to have it displayed in some fashion around the house, and it served as like a migratory goat all over my mother's house since she could not throw it out.

So you are asking why is it on Ebay?

Well, now that Evvie is up in New Jersey, and now she is in an assisted living facility, my mother is now free and in the clear to get rid of the goat. She is cleaning out the house of all the stuff she could not stand but which she did not want to offend Evvie. WE ARE IN THE CLEAR!!! EVVIE WON'T FIND OUT!!

I think most of us have a green goat or two of our own around the place. Mine is a rooster. Specifically, a Restoration Hardware silverplated rooster cocktail shaker someone gave us as a wedding gift. A few years ago, I was rummaging around in the basement, preparing for a yard sale, and found the cocktail shaker, still in its original box. "Do we want to keep this?" I asked Brady. "What is it?" he asked. I explained, and for a moment we both tried our damndest to imagine that Bertie Wooster might come over for dinner and we'd need it to make martinis. No luck.

The silver rooster cocktail shaker was sitting happily on the table at the yard sale when my sister-in-law's car pulled up. A few moments later I noticed she had picked up the shaker and was waving it around under my husband's nose. Since there was no gin it it, and it didn't seem, from her tone, that she was planning to buy it, I figured we were about to find out where the rooster had come from.

Rats! Back it went into the house, and into our little china cabinet--where it has yet to be used for anything. Though my current plans are to migrate it gradually back down into the basement.