Lonely Goatherd

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Anyone who works for me knows that I'll call a temporary break from work for a Really Good Nature Sighting. When I worked at Glimmerglass Opera in rural central New York, my poor co-workers were forced to stop work to consider the lives of bald eagles, egg-laying snapping turtles, yellow-bellied sap suckers, and gigantic salamanders.

Today the "stop the car! stop the car" moment was a herd of over a hundred goats, two blocks from our studio. I've written before about the local fire-suppression goats and weed-eating sheep, but I'd never seen them in action among the warehouses of North Berkeley.




There's a weed and trash filled lot near where I work. It takes up an entire city block and has been for sale the entire time that I've lived in the Bay Area. Today the formerly waist-high weeds were gone, and the lot was filled with over a hundred goats.

The goats were frolicking and head-butting each other, while a Border Collie ran around, looking industrious. Very strange, for such an industrial part of town.




Later that day, one of my coworkers found this beautiful Australian Shepherd, in the middle of our street. We brought him inside, and gave him some water. He ran around like crazy in my gigantic studio. We played energetic indoor frisbee, and had a lot of visitors from other departments. There was much slobbering and snuggling. I was smitten.




I called the goat company to see if they might be missing one of their dogs (they weren't) and later the coworker who found the dog took it to Berkeley Animal Care Services to see if he had been micro-chipped. I hope this sweet animal is reunited with his people very soon.




In other news, I totally screwed up the sleeves of the sweater I'm knitting. I'm not sure how I goofed up my gauge swatch, but the cuffs were insanely huge. Like, a third again too large. Damn.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Those are some well fed goats! We used to raise Tennessee Fainting Goats... That was a hoot! They did prefer to munch on my ornamentals and bushes rather than the weeds, though!

Hope the pooch made out alright!

Bandaid
Ashley said…
That is a VERY cool use for goats! I had no idea.
Anne Bonny said…
That's such a cool job for those goats!

I hope the Aussie finds his home :( They make AWESOME family members, super smart!!
Stefaneener said…
I know that insane Aussie face. He is incredibly beautiful! I hope he finds his people.

Good good goats. Sorry about the sweater. My Christmas-present mittens are too big, but I can't rip them now.
I really never would have expected to see goats and graffiti together...not in Berkeley. Shows that times, and attitudes, have changed. The Aussie is adorable, someone must be missing him.

Hope you can sort your sleeves out. I always knit mine together, on the same needle, as a pair. Do you do that, or am I the only crazy one? I once had one sleeve come out longer than the other, but since I've knitted them both at the same time I've avoided that ;)
Becca said…
I love that the herding dog found him some goats to herd! He must have been in pure heaven! :)

So glad he was reunited with his folks as well.

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