ANIMAL KINGDOM

Let’s start with Dipstick. Dipstick is a seven-month-old goat who will be making his debut in the market goat competition at the Allen County Fair this Friday. Dipstick didn’t arrive on planet Earth with his name. Bryce Culbertson gave it to him. It’s Bryce’s goat. “He’s Dipstick,” explained the 9-year-old, pointing to the goat’s brown-tipped tail, “because his tail, it’s like it got dipped in chocolate.”

Then there’s Kara’s goat. Kara is Bryce’s little sister. She’s not presenting anything at this year’s fair. She’s too young. Still, she has a goat of her own, Chocolate Chip, and she wanted to show it off. It’s a good-looking goat. She’ll show it at next year’s fair. “I call it Chocolate Chip,” said Kara, “because she has lots of brown dots all over her, so it’s like chocolate chips are on her, so we just named her Chocolate Chip.”

“I would have named her Oreo,” said Bryce.

“We already have a goat named Oreo,” said Nicky, Bryce’s mother, referencing one of the family’s registered Nubians.

“Oh, yeah!” recalled Bryce.

It’s a forgivable lapse. When you share your home life with more than 60 animals — dogs, goats, chickens, cows, pigs, horses, rabbits, not to mention the retinue of wild cats that cross your porch each year — it’s easy to forget a creature or two.

Not all of the animals at the Culbertsons’ rural Iola farm are named after chocolate products, however. There’s Big Brutus, for example, the 110-pound Saint Bernard, who Bryce showed at the fair on Sunday. There’s Flicka, the family’s lustrous black mare. There’s Sugar, a gentle Mastiff-Shepherd

mix. There’s a Saint Bernard-Rottweiler mix — a dog the size of a small pick-up truck, with jaws like two coal shovels — whose name I didn’t catch because I was busy trying to determine the strength of the chain that held him to his post. And there are three cows, among them Miss Priss, who Bryce regards as the “cow that loves [him] most.”

“I think the first cow I ever saw was our cow T-Bone,” Bryce said. “T-Bone liked me a lot. He would let me pet him. But I’m pretty sure he died of a sickness.”

“We lost T-Bone to pneumonia,” explained Nicky.

“But Casey,” chirped Bryce, “Casey we took to the meat locker.”

The first job of any 9-year-old living amid such a wide variety of animals is to develop a scrupulous hierarchy of affection. Here is Bryce’s: He “really likes” goats “a lot, a lot.” He “really likes” cows, because “if they like you, it’s fun to play around with them and love on them.” He likes chickens. He does not like roosters! “The last two roosters we sold,” said Bryce, “whenever you turned your back, them roosters would attack you.” Also, he doesn’t like pigs. He used to like pigs. Not anymore. He did a pig project for last year’s fair. Total disaster. “We don’t do pigs anymore,” said Bryce. “They can be pretty destructive,” conceded Nicky. “But, mom,” said Bryce, pulling at the silver lining, “it was worth it to get that good bacon, wasn’t it?”

Thinking some more, Bryce decides that he “actually likes cows more than goats, and the only thing I like more than cows is probably dogs.”

At this point, Bryce disappeared into the house to fetch Big Brutus, the Saint Bernard, who was, on that sweltering July day, reported to be lying across the air conditioning vent. After a minute, Bryce appeared with Brutus, who, with a pendulous rope of saliva hanging from his jowl, lumbered sleepily down the short flight of front steps and into the yard, whereupon he registered the day’s unflinching temperatures, and, without stopping, made a U-turn and went straight back inside. “I don’t think he loves the heat,” said Bryce.

BRYCE is a smart, talkative, compassionate boy, who would also like you to know that he is quite strong. Strong enough, in fact, to pick up, all by himself, a 45-pound bag of special, 16-percent-protein show goat feed from Orschelns. “Which is pretty surprising,” admitted Bryce, “because, actually, I am pretty skinny.”