Spanish Goats

A friend of a friend took some time off and went to Spain to tend goats (lucky.) These were some of his goats.

Sydney

This is Sydney. I met her when I was working at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. She's a character and a hell raiser and I think she's one of the main reasons I ended up so obsessed with goats.

Goat on Wall Street

This was the illustration on the front of the Money & Investment section of the April 3rd 2008 Wall Street Journal. I really didn't understand what the article was about but the headline was "The Auction-Rate Lockout: Values Tossed Around As Individual Investors Can't Get at Their Cash."

Goat Art

I pick up goat art whenever I can. I can't even remember where I got the postcards by Laura Marshall, but I love their whimsey. I believe she is based in Colorado.

The Goat or Who is Sylvia?

Some day, when I have more time, I'll talk more about the goat as a sexual character. Believe me, as I try to build support for goats as grand animals, I get some strange responses, and I think a lot of that is tied to people perceiving goats as somehow being tied to bestiality (people having sex with animals). Well, this play, "The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?" by Edward Albee, may have had a liiiittle to do with that. In the play, a woman finds out that her husband is having an affair with Sylvia. Who is, well, I don't want to ruin it for you (and anyway, it's the sheep that are the kinky ones.)

Goats and Coffee

There is a legend that a monk walked the monistary's goats out into the field one day, and decided to take a nap under a tree. When he awoke, he could not find his goats anywhere. He walked a long way around the side of a mountain and finally found them dancing around on their hind legs as if enchanted! The monk was dumbfounded. He watched in awe, and then he saw it. The goats were munching on berries growing on bushes nearby. He went and chewed a few himself and found them horribly bitter. Still, his head felt lighter, his heart beet faster and he decided to take some back to the monistary. There, he roasted the beans, ground them up and made them into a tea. And coffee was born!

Thank you Dancing Goats!

You can give the gift of goat!

Heifer International is an organization that helps teach people all around the world the benefits of sustainable farming to help alleviate poverty. Its start can be found in a Christian charity when a man sent a boatload of cows to another country to help the poor. Now, people can apply to receive training and animals and in return, they pass on offspring from those animals to another person in need.

For $120 you can "purchase" a goat (or for $10 a "share in a goat") -- and the donation goes to support these efforts. They have also branched out to trees, bees and other farm-related means of helping people help themselves.

A book was even written about Heifer, and even though the group is named after the bovine species, the protagonist animal in the book is ... wait for it ... A GOAT!