the goat saga continues…

driving home from work today i stopped by the hill with the goats again. this time other people had started noticing the goats too. in fact there was a line of cars parked on the side of the road, and all sorts of people were getting out and taking pictures of the goats etc. truly bizarre.

i was way curious about what the hell these goats were doing here, so i finally started asking people if they knew. so it turns out that these goats were brought here by the water department so that they could eat all the shrubbery etc off the hill and thus reduce the risk of fire. weird eh? is there really no easier way of reducing risk of fire than to let a hundred goats loose on the hill?

unfortunately, not everyone was in agreement w/ the water dept. i talked to this one lady who was really pissed and upset about the goats being there. she told me extensively about how she (and the sierra club) was so distraught that the goats were destroying the environment on the hill, how there is a species of butterfly native only to this area that was getting eaten by these goats, and how once the goats ate all the natural vegetation, tons of weeds would grow back in it’s place thus creating an even worse fire hazard. this lady was practically in tears when she told me all this. she was also yelling insults at the water dept worker that was there. the whole scene was really really weird. oh, and this kid that was with the water dept actually had a “goats-r-us” jacket on. whoa!

here are some photos. the first three are a bit blurry unfortunately…. Click!!

-v