The census taker arrived yesterday. He came with his pet goat. He was a nice man and as best I could figure, his goat was a nice goat, looking very uptown, sporting a red felt hat coyly covering her horns. I didn’t know female goats had horns. I thought my ex-wife was the only female with horns. Sadly, the goat bleated occasionally should the census taker get too far out of sight or out of reach. (The prudent census taker had secured the goat to railings on the corridor as the census taker made his census-taking rounds.) There is nothing like the bleating of a census-taker’s goat to melt your heart. My wife and I could not resist the urge to pet the goat, trying to comfort it; letting it know it was among friends. That didn’t work out so well but it didn’t bite us and as best I could tell, it was vermin-free.

Having read the newly-monitored and regulated media, I knew the census forms were bar-coded thus enabling the government to use algorithms, postal workers, moles and other data mining techniques to burrow into our private lives and invade our otherwise happily-ensconced private life here in Hungary. The former ex-communist, re-packaged-for-democracy government, (the one ousted just over a year ago and now potentially being repackaged yet again as another party-du-jour) were the ones being the most vocal about this bar-coding and potential misuse in government hands. I googled ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ but unfortunately Google had no reference to AVO, the former communist government’s secret police arm who did not need to burden themselves with the expense of census since they had turned the country into a nation of informers. I am sure some of those informers had pet goats, too.

I also knew completing the census form was mandatory. Even we lowly expats are obliged by law to complete the goat-accompanied census. This caused me some concern. The concern was not over privacy issues since anyone with an internet-connected computer, a credit card or a Facebook account knows privacy no longer exists (despite the fact that in the west, we keep selling the privacy myth the same way we sell Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and occasionally, the Tooth Fairy, although Hallmark has yet to figure out how to make and market Protecting Privacy greeting cards).

No, I had other concerns. Since nem besel Magyar, (I don’t speak Hungarian) how could I complete the form? What were the penalties if I made an honest mistake? Were those penalties different if I made a dishonest mistake? And what should I feed the goat? Like my wife, the goat is a vegetarian but unlike my wife, it is not very bright. We tried to feed it a piece of celery but it turned its snout up at it. It simply wanted to be re-united with the census-taker who was across the corridor, completing a census. Or was it the flowers in the basket hanging on the corridor railing she wanted?

Apparently, the census asks how many people live in our home. That would be two. The census also asks how many rooms we have and that depends on which real estate agent you talk to. We still haven’t figured that out. How can one apartment with a kitchen, living room, two bathrooms and two bedrooms be listed with 2.5 rooms while another apartment with a kitchen, living room, two bathrooms and two bedrooms be listed with 4 rooms? And if two people live there, what if they also have a goat? “Any kids live here?” “In a manner of speaking, yes.” They also ask how many toilets you have. Must they know? Fine. We have three. One was a renovation mistake. Do we really need to get into this?

As it turned out, the census taker had a list of flats for his rounds last night yet strangely, we were not on the list. Apparently we are on a separate list and he will be back next week to take our census. Or take us, I am not sure. His lack of census-interest in us did not stop us from trying to get friendly with his goat. One thing that came of this is that it got all the neighbours out on the corridors and talking. It would seem that goats can bring people together: no small feat here.

Later on Facebook I came across a friend’s posting of four pictures and the title for the series was “End of days?”. There was the goat, sporting her red felt hat. She was walking her census taker who pulled a cart behind him. My friend who posted the pictures obviously assumed the cart contained all the man’s worldly goods. Little did he know that in that cart was vital national data, entrusted to a man, his goat, chance and soon to be entrusted to the government, bar codes and all. But hey: if you can’t trust a government with goat-toting census takers, who can you trust?