118 Goats Invade Boise Neighborhood, Eat Everything, Win Twitter

BOISE, ID — Anyone who has ever cared for goats understands what happened Friday morning when Boise residents awoke to 118 adult and baby goats milling around their neighborhood eating everything in sight. Goats are clever little escape artists and don’t always like to stay put.

That’s apparently what happened in this case. The flock of goats, which had been grazing in a field near the neighborhood on Boise’s west side, were rounded up and returned to their provenance, but not before the spectacle attracted a large crowd.

Animal control officials realized they needed reinforcements and the goats wouldn’t fit into the one truck that had been dispatched to the neighborhood to haul the herd home. A company called We Rent Goats, which owns and leases the goats to landowners to remove noxious weeds, responded with more vehicles.

The goats had about an hour to breakfast on grass, rose bushes and low-hanging branches before they were captured and trucked back where they belong.

That’s all according to television station KTVB, whose reporter Joe Parrish tweeted out photos of the goats nibbling through the neighborhood.

Ben Dunn told the television station his mother rousted him out of bed to tell him the goats were on the loose.

“Half the neighborhood's lawn has been cut — I mean, mowing for free!" Dunn said. "It's kind of funny to see them in the road a ton, like not even caring about the cars."

Kim Gabica, who owns We Rent Goats with her husband, Matt, told KTVB the goats broke through a fence and went on “a little adventure to meet the neighbors.”

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"They're very creative escape artists, sometimes, so just when you think you have all the containment figured out, they find a way that you didn't think of," Gabica said, noting that it’s rare for that many goats to get loose at a time.

Goats are increasingly being used around the country as an environmentally friendly way to control weeds. Besides eliminating the need for fertilizers, they also provide free fertilizer, aerate the soil with their hooves.

Parrish’s tweets won Twitter for the day.

You can read more of the Twitter conversation here.

File photo of goat via Shutterstock / media_digital