Bet you're wrong about her being smarter. You bought a goose for 8 bucks as a joke and then acted surprised when it acts like a goose. That bird isn't running some master plan, she's just grabbing shiny stuff because geese do that. You left a hot forge unattended and now you're blaming the livestock for walking into an open door. The real problem is you got 4 hooks and 2 punches sitting where a known thief can reach them, which is on you and not her. Lock your bench, close the shop, and stop giving a farm animal credit for outsmarting a grown man.

Learned this same lesson with mulch volcanoes everywhere.

The $200 markup the filing service added was not "nothing." That company keeps their site running, handles payments, and deals with people who mess up their own forms every single day. You knew your state's website and you only had one simple LLC to file. Someone with three businesses in three different states or a name that needs a special check is going to burn way more than 15 minutes figuring all that out. Paying a service is not always a scam, sometimes it is just paying for someone else to do the boring part.