A Goat's Tale

Yesterday I was looking out the kitchen window while I cleaned up after lunch and saw that someone had let their dogs loose in the park again. As a parent of children who are terrified of animals, I am quite sensitive to animals roaming free in the neighborhood. Since we weren't planning a park outing for the afternoon I kind of shook off my annoyance and went about my work. I glanced out the window a few minutes later and did a double take. Those animals were not walking like dogs. I went out on the back porch to get a closer look. They were goats. I was almost sure of it. And some kids at the park were starting to try and chase them off. Well, my neighbors have goats at the back end of their property so I figured I would call and give them a heads up. No answer. So I called someone that I thought would know their cell number. She gave it to me and told me that they were out camping. Great! I figured I would call just to find out the tricks of coaxing the goats back to their pen. I got voicemail. At this point the kids at the park were trying to send the goats into the street so I figured I better go help those poor scared animals. I checked out the goat pen and couldn't tell how they had escaped so I was going to try to just put them in the back yard. One look in the yard told me that was not a good idea. They had their two dogs penned up back there--that would be fun for all of the animals. But, the decision was obvious when I saw the beautiful garden that I knew the goats would destroy. So, I grabbed the two oldest kids from the park and the three of us herded the goats to the back end of the property. I tried to pry the fence back to enlarge the hole that I thought they had escaped through. We were having no success getting them to come close to this hole and then suddenly they bolted and in two seconds flat were under the fence in a hole we hadn't seen. We did our best to secure the fence but hopefully the goats got scared enough with their adventure not to attempt another escape. The neighbors are back now so hopefully my goat herding days are done.