Goat Caper

Luckily the day changed from very rainy to almost dry on Saturday. That’s because my husband and I spent the entire afternoon running around the neighborhoods of South Salem chasing a trio of goats. They had gotten out of their fenced area at the Unity church on Fabry across from Safeway. That fenced area had kept in goats for several years. Who knew that goats could jump high enough to get on the barn roof to walk to their freedom? Worried that they would cause an accident on some busy street, we tried frantically to at least keep them on the Unity church property. They were too wily for that, so we trekked across fields and residential neighborhoods trying to get them back. At one point we thought we had them trapped and they went right over us and proceeded to trot to a new subdivision. Along the way we picked up three or four new members of our posse to help out. From one subdivision to another we went, crossing busy roads in the process. We were almost to the freeway. Sometimes we lost track of them and had to cruise the neighborhoods to catch sight of them again. Finally we spotted them on Battlecreek Road – a pretty busy road – with cars stopped in both directions for them. They veered off into a driveway that had a gate and we thought we had them! Not!

Well, we tried to go at them from all directions, which herded them to an area behind the house. Some of us went on one side and some on the other side. Where were the goats? I was stumped until the owners of the house informed us that they had jumped inside the house to the pantry and the owners closed the door. Well, that netted us two of the three. After tying up the two, some of the posse went chasing after the third goat, which had slipped through the gate and was back in the neighborhoods. That chase finally ended when the silly goat tried to jump through a fence and got her horns stuck.

Too bad there is such a long waiting list for slaughterhouses right now. The goats are locked tight into a 12 x 12 stall and won’t see the light of day again.

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