I’ve been wistful the last few days because of a traffic accident that took the lives of 243 of my acquaintances.
Said acquaintances were goats. Said goats were riding to a job site Friday in San Rafael when their truck tipped over, and 243 of 400 in the herd smothered to death within minutes, apparently due to a bad decision by the local cops.
People who live in the Bay Area will likely have met these goats, or at least seen them. They’re used as a more-or-less environmentally benign brush-clearing labor force. They eat native plants, sure, and they’ve been known to move invasive plant seeds by eating them in one spot and excreting them in another. You mostly see them, though, in areas already overrun by invasives, and the herders will keep them on the ranch for three days eating alfalfa after they work in especially seedy surroundings. They work every year on a hillside a block and a half from our house: they were working there the week we moved in in 2002, and I started a yearly tradition of pulling over as I drove past so that Zeke could say hello through the car window for a few minutes.
The driver of the truck was making a turn at seven miles per hour. The load shifted and the truck went over. Reuters has quoted the goats’ owner Terri Oyarzun as saying most of the victims could have survived had the police allowed their release from the overturned trailer.
Police were so concerned with controlling traffic and preventing another accident that they disregarded pleas by the goat’s herder, Oyarzun said. About 150 goats survived, she said.
“Those goats didn’t have to die,” she said. “It wasn’t necessary. We had herding dogs.”
Instead, she had to listen to her livestock screaming for help as they suffocated.
I’m not bashing the cops, really. I can understand why they made the decision they did. It’s just unfortunate and horrible. Poor things.
I used to be sickened by the sight of an empty cattle trailer. That was until I saw a full one overturned by the side of the road.
Couldn’t they have stopped the traffic?
Arrrgh, those goats are adorable.
I’m sorry, Chris.
(The survivors must be traumatized. I bet they won’t easily load into that truck again.)
we like the goats, too, and thought this was an awful accident. i remember seeing them [or herds like them] up in tilden park. they clear growth that humans can’t clear well, keep down the fire danger. a family we know keeps 2 goats in their steep back yard up on the ridge; the city gave them a pet waiver because the goats do good work and don’t bother anyone.
[this looks to be a bad fire year. flying down south on sunday, the santa barbara fire was huge and very visible from our plane.]
That’s just . . . horrible. Horrible.
I often see how our casual cruelty to animals makes cruelty to our fellow humans easier to stomach. I wish for every goat a peaceful death on a full stomach.
Admittedly, that full stomach has often been mine.
Poor goats!
(Though I find myself wondering: how did 400 goats fit into a trailer in the first place?)
I had the same question, Rana! Either I’m vastly overestimating the size of the goats (about like this...somewhere between big dogs and small standard ponies yes?), or underestimating the size of the trailer.
I’m not going to share your reticence. If I’d been the herd-owner, I’d have found out where those cops live and dumped the bodies in their yards. Donut-eating cruiser-slob thickheads.