From the managing editor, April 2020

Have you ever had goats?

I have, and I adored them. However, they sure can be scoundrels.

My first goat was back in the 1980s, when I lived in the Wiregrass region of southern Alabama. 

She was a white Nubian, large and proud. I had hoped she would help me by eating off heavy growth on the back downslope part of our property, but when it came right down to it, all she seemed to want was to visit with humans and get frequent head scratches.

I hadn’t asked the woman who sold her to us, but it appeared she had an expectation of hanging out around the house rather than in the fenced area down below. She didn’t want to eat any of the undergrowth, but then again, maybe I expected too much from her.

She sure liked to eat the bagged grain feed I got at the local farm supply store.

After a few weeks we found her a new home.

Fast forward to this century. We lived on a large forested homestead in Yancey County, North Carolina, with a herd of dogs and a couple of cats.

The dogs loved to go down the driveway to socialize with the neighbor’s dog. Problem was, their dog could go in and out of their house, and she taught my dogs to do the same.

They had one of those magnetized mosquito-screens hanging on their front doorway, and they would leave the solid door open. Their doggie went in and out, and when she went in, our dogs, again, being social animals, accepted her invitation to join her inside.

Once when this happened, one of my dogs saw or smelled some meat thawing on the kitchen counter and next thing I knew, our neighbors were (legitimately) complaining about our dog dragging their dinner out the door.

I knew the dog had done wrong and apologized for the mishap, yet my samoyed husky had an obstinately uncooperative attitude about it all. If she could have spoken she probably would have complained: “But their dog invited us in there!”

Then we got some goats.

They were two cute fellows, brown on the back and white on the belly. The dogs accepted having them around; heck, the dogs liked to nibble on the grain feed we put out for the goats every day. The chickens liked it as well, and would come onto the patio and eat their fill.

I tried to fence in an area for the goats, but if you have ever had goats you know that fencing really isn’t designed to keep them where you want them to stay. 

We had an old canning shed that I adapted for them to stay in, and I put in fence posts to create them a nice area for when I couldn’t let them out on the property. I put up chicken wire fence about four foot high, and a strand of barbed wire along the top, thinking that would keep them contained.

It didn’t. The happy little goats would just climb or jump right out of their pen as easy as you please. I would catch them and put them right back in, so I put up more fencing. They saw it all as a minor inconvenience to be overcome with the greatest of ease. 

We had often been awaken by the rooster crowing in the rhododendron bush right outside the bedroom window, but soon that was superseded by the goats jumping up to stand on the window sill, looking in the window with loud, wavering bleats. 

It’s one thing for the crow of a rooster to awaken you, but something entirely different to have a pair of goats glaring in your window, bleating out happy “good mornings.”

We weren’t able to break the goats of climbing onto the window sills, but that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem arose when they started following the dogs around.

Now, I guess goats are also social animals, and they saw nothing wrong with following the dogs, until they followed the dogs into the neighbor’s house.

We knew nothing about it until one day my wife missed a phone call. She immediately checked for a message to hear the neighbor saying the goats were a problem.

“Goats on the couch! Goats in the house!” was her breathless message.

Obviously their presence was not desired.

So we re-homed those two cute goats. Quickly.

I guess we just aren’t supposed to have goats.

—Jonathan Austin