This really gets my goat

[samhexum]

Rogue goat may have helped dozens of farm animals escape

 

"Fred" the goat

 

 

Dozens of goats and sheep brought for slaughter escaped from a New Jersey livestock auction house Wednesday night — and the facility’s manager believes another goat who had bolted to freedom more than a year ago helped them to make their getaway.

 

The animals escaped through an unsecured gate at the Hackettstown Livestock Auction House on West Stiger Street around 9:30 p.m., cops said.

 

It took about an hour for police and locals to herd about 60 of the livestock back to their pens with a rope and cracked corn, before police re-secured the gate with a piece of rope, police spokesman Sgt. Darren Tynan told the Post.

 

Auction house manager Bouwe Postma said that those were the only animals who had escaped — but Tynan said that between 10 and 20 more were believed to still be on the loose.

 

Locals jokingly point the finger at another goat nicknamed Fred that escaped from the same auction market more than a year ago and sporadically pops up around the town. In fact, cops received reports that Fred was in the area a couple of hours before the escape.

 

On Thursday afternoon, after the escape, Fred showed up at the facility and headbutted the gate holding newly corralled animals multiple times, in an apparent effort to let them back out.

 

Postma managed to shoo him away, but the sighting made him suspect that Fred was also behind Wednesday night’s escape.

 

“It was him [last night],” Postma declared. “I think he’s the culprit. He must have banged that fence and let him out last night. I’m almost positive. He must have put a lot of force into that.”

 

The auction house holds sales every Tuesday, and this herd was purchased by one owner who hadn’t picked up his haul yet due to a broken down truck.

 

“People tend to rally for the escapees,” Hackettstown Mayor Maria DiGiovanni said. “I kind of like when they break free, but I see both sides. It is a business.”

 

Tynan was thankful the animals’ bolt for freedom didn’t spark trouble on the roads.

 

“There could have been accidents — people could have crashed into them,” he said. “We don’t know the mind of a sheep or a goat or what they’ll do.”

 

The escape came less than a week after about 100 goats went on the lam in Idaho***, munching their way through a suburban Boise, Idaho, neighborhood in an incident dubbed “Goat-a-Palooza 2018.”

 

The animals were later wrangled onto a truck by the firm We Rent Goats, which appeared to have accidentally set the animals free.

 

There is no known connection between the Hackensack and Boise incidents, Tynan said.

 

************************************************************

***

Escaped goats wreak havoc on suburb

 

Dozens of goats went on the lam Friday, munching their way through a suburban Idaho neighborhood.

 

Neighbors were baffled by the new kids on the block, who were hoofing it from house to house in search of a meal in Boise, according to Joe Parris of local station KTVB.

 

“About 100 goats are on the loose right now in a #Boise neighborhood. They are going house to house eating everything in sight. Nobody has a clue where they came from,” he wrote on Twitter Friday.

 

Wild video footage shows the slow-motion stampede pause in a homeowner’s front yard to chow down on grass, according to Parris — who dubbed the phenomenon “Goat-a-Paloza 2018.”

 

The animals were later wrangled onto a truck by the firm We Rent Goats, which appeared to have accidentally set the animals free. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

One observer pointed out a perk: “Free lawn mowing.”

[+ Avalon]

Maybe Fred is the god Pan?

 

http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Pan.html

[+ sync]

[samhexum]

Goats enjoy brief escape on way to Brooklyn butcher

 

 

You gotta be kidding!

 

More than 20 goats escaped from a truck headed to a Brooklyn slaughterhouse Tuesday when the driver pulled over for a nap — and it’s the third time a herd has broken free in less than two weeks, sources said.

 

The animals had been doomed for the dinner plate when they busted out of trailer attached to a pickup truck near the live-slaughter halal market Vivero Primos in Bushwick at around 4 a.m., the owner and witnesses said.

 

“I saw the driver this morning and he didn’t say anything to me. Stupid guy,” said Ali Saeed, who owns the market on Wyckoff Avenue and Hancock Street. “I don’t know why he would come here at four in the morning when we open at eight.”

 

The brave Billys got a taste of freedom — hoofing to a nearby bus stop and chowing down on grass — before a neighbor woke up the driver and helped wrangle the goats.

 

“A neighbor came over and said to me, ‘I caught your goats.’ I thought he was joking. I said, ‘All right thank you.’ He said, “I’d like a free chicken,” said Saeed. “Now I’ll have to give him one.”

 

The animal world jailbreak comes less than a week after 75 sheep and goats escaped from a livestock auction in Hackettstown, New Jersey. And on Aug. 3, 100 goats broke free from a truck renting the animals for a lawn service in Boise, Idaho.

 

Bushwick neighbor Melvin Benton, 58, was leaving his apartment when he spotted the goats in the middle of the street — as cars swerved around them. He tried to wake up the truck driver, who had brought the animals from a farm in Iowa.

 

“The street [was] covered in goats. The driver was knocked out asleep. I was banging on the window but he wasn’t waking up. The goats were across the street from their trailer,” he said, adding he rushed to help round them up. “I called the police…They got him up.”

 

Ciaran Flanagan, a 33-year-old bartender who snapped a shot of the goats, said, “The guy was shouting, ’Yo, the goats got out!’”

 

“I’m from Ireland, so I’m used to goats roaming the roads. I didn’t expect to see it here,” Flanagan said.

 

The goats were safely rounded up before 8 a.m., witnesses said.

 

But Brooklyn neighbors were stunned to see the critters in the urban jungle.

 

Lorraine Fields, 56, who lives next door to the slaughterhouse said, “It was terrible! I thought, Oh my god, get the goats!”

 

Tony Castro, the landlord of a building next door, said the shop has been in the neighborhood for the last decade.

 

“I don’t know how they allow goats to be slaughtered in the city,” Castro said, noting that the shop is “smelly.”

 

Animal rights advocate Chris Allieri pointed to the “cruelty” associated with live poultry markets and slaughterhouses, which are scattered around the Big Apple.

 

“[T]here’s likely no happy ending for these animals,” Allieri said.

 

Saeed didn’t provide the name of the driver or his firm.

[+ Avalon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_meat

 

I like goat meat. I've mentioned the mom & pop store I used to walk to; the owners were East Indians. Once-in-awhile Mr Shopkeeper would give me curry goat stew that he had made at home. Good stuff!

[samhexum]

Goats captured after running wild on subway tracks

 

 

 

They got their goat!

 

Police managed to capture two goats who had been running wild on the N train tracks in Brooklyn Monday morning — after using tranquilizer darts to calm those crazy kids down.

 

Officers spent two hours trying to corral the billies between the Fort Hamilton Parkway and New Utrecht stops in Borough Park, and eventually the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit had to step in with sedatives to bring the four-legged scoundrels down, Cpt. Jonathan Bobin told reporters after the chase.

 

The zonked-out animals snored as police bound them with ropes waited for a van to haul the captives away and hand them over to the city’s Animal Care and Control.

 

It’s still unclear where the goats came from — but Bobin noted there are many meat markets in the area.

 

It’s up to Animal Care if the animals will escape the chopping block for good, he said.

 

“Hopefully they’ll find new homes,” said Bobin, the commanding officer of Transit District 34.

 

Despite the weird creatures who ride the rails every day, he said these scofflaws were new kids on the block.

 

“Sometimes we see cats and dogs but never goats. That’s a new one,” he said.

 

Bobin said Coney Island-bound N trains were delayed for two hours during the chase, but the MTA said trains were only rerouted for 30 minutes.

[samhexum]

About 200 rogue goats took over a California neighborhood this week after they escaped from their enclosure, video of the wild episode shows.

 

The invaded an east San Jose neighborhood Tuesday evening after one of them somehow tapped an electric fence while munching on flowers, local resident Terry Roelands told KNTV.

 

Then the boards on the fence broke, setting the goats loose, Roelands said.

 

“I’m dead,” Roelands’ son Zach tweeted. “When I got back from the store all the goats had broken through the fence and were [wreaking] havoc on our street.”

 

“This is the craziest thing to happen all quarantine,” he added.

 

Zach told The Mercury News the goats were rounded up quickly, but munched on neighbors’ potted plants during their jailbreak and left behind a trail of droppings.

 

Terry Roelands told KNTV the hill behind his home caught on fire about 15 years ago and since then, goats are used a few times each year to eat their way through the brush.

 

 

 

[JayCeeKy]

In Kentucky, GOAT has a different meaning: