THE FACE OF EVIL? Animal control officers had their work cut out for them when they captured this goat on Wednesday after he held a woman hostage in her home. (The Observer/LAURA MACKIE-HANCOCK).

By T.L. Petersen

Observer Staff Writer

"This is a possessed goat."

"This is an aggressive little sucker."

"I’ve never seen one that mean."

From the original homeowner who called the county dispatch center Wednesday morning to animal care technicians at the Blue Mountain Humane Association animal shelter, it was the day of the really mad Billy Goat Gruff.

"I consider him Cujo," said Patti Grammer, animal care technician at the shelter. "We’ve never had an animal like that."

So how bad can a Nigerian Dwarf Goat, weighing maybe 50 pounds, be?

The first call came in at 10:22 a.m. from a woman living along Starr Lane. An animal control officer was requested because the woman reported a goat, with a full set of horns, was trying to ram her sliding glass doors.

When she’d gone outside, the goat chased her, then climbed on her patio furniture to look inside the window at her. And, the woman added, as she moved around the house, the billy goat followed along outside.

"She said the goat wouldn’t leave," a county dispatcher said.

When recently hired animal control officer Lani Adams arrived at the home, she tried to tempt the goat to her using a bit of sweet feed that officers use to catch horses.

The goat charged her, animal control officer Becky Maddock said.

Adams, pinned by the goat to the hood of her pickup truck, called for backup and listened as the goat continued to rear back and ram the truck with its horns

Maddock arrived and used her jacket to momentarily blind the goat. Maddock and Adams were able to hogtie the goat, which was slightly less than knee-high, and get it loaded into the cages in the back of the animal control truck.

"He’s really stinky," Maddock noted.

By the time the two officers got the goat to the animal shelter, it had gotten itself untied and was trying to ram the sides of its metal cage, drawing the attention of passing vehicles.

"People were really looking," Maddock said. "And Lani said she could feel it inside the truck."

The officers unloaded the goat and got it into a dog kennel. Moments later, it butted the kennel door open, damaging the latching mechanism and getting loose in the impound side of the shelter.

Even the dogs in the shelter remained quiet as the goat tried to escape.

"It was like he was intimidating the dogs and they were scared to death," Maddock noted.

Adams and animal care technicians were finally able to get a dog collar on the goat and tie him into a dog kennel.

Later in the afternoon, animal control officers took the goat to the livestock yard, thinking to impound him there. The sales barn staff turned them down, telling Maddock that they "absolutely would not take him."

Back to the shelter, where, for the night, the goat was staked out in an outdoor exercise area to keep it from causing more damage.

On Thursday, the goat’s fate was left hanging, but darkening. Adams was going to try to locate the goat’s owner no one had been found in the Starr Lane area willing to claim it while Maddock discussed the case with the district attorney.

"It is a very aggressive animal," said Grammer, who has had goats in the past. "I really don’t think anybody will have this goat who destroys property and threatens people."

By the end of a long day of goat wrangling, Maddock was thinking that only someone who lived an isolated existence and wanted a watch goat could give the animal a home.

"This thing ? grrrr," Maddock said. "I’ve been charged by dogs, by geese but this is an aggressive little sucker."