Grant's argument rests on the many flavors of goat that are out there. Decades of bloodline tinkering have produced more than 80 varieties worldwide. In the U.S., there are Angoras, with long, luxurious hair; buttermilk-rich Nubians; and genetically altered beasts in whose milk floats spider-silk protein—which, according to a recent BBC report, may someday be harvested for military uses, such as tougher bulletproof vests. There's also the famous Tennessee fainting goat, which falls over in a fit of bleats at the slightest sensory shock, such as a bird whistling overhead. Americans tend to eat fainting, Nubian, Boer (originally bred by Dutch farmers in South Africa), and American Kiko goats, the latter being descendants of a Kiwi goat breed developed by the ominous-sounding Goatex Group.
The blood of dwarves and La Manchas, a breed noted for its tameness, runs through the veins of Grant's goats.
Kevin P. Casey
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Kaly, a West Seattle retiree who didn't want her last name printed, is perhaps the longest-established modern goat-keeper in Seattle. She has kept some sort of ruminant on her huge, Asian-style jungle compound—which is large enough to legally support them—since the early '80s.
"They're just characters," says Kaly, 67. The ur-goat was Gordon, a full-size goat who apparently staggered into Kaly's life after a lifetime of debauchery in the Drones Club. Gordon made a habit of escaping and getting collared by the local constabulary, who'd haul him home and tie him up again. When a blurry-eyed Kaly stumbled downstairs to find out who was ringing her doorbell at 5 a.m. one Sunday morning, she discovered Gordon using the bell as a step to reach and devour her hanging geraniums.
She eventually unloaded him on somebody else, substituting a series of smaller goats in his place. From Harbor Avenue, passers-by can watch the two current boarders go through an unusual feasting ritual. First, neighbor and self-appointed goat manager John Hendrickson rings an oversized triangle that signals grub time. The goats then feast on alfalfa from the backside of what looks like a covered carriage. "This is like the back of a chuck wagon in the cowboy days," says Hendrickson, a Safeway seafood manager who built the Old West replica himself.
In the Central District yard of Joe McDonnal and Virginia Wyman—owners of Queen Anne dinner club the Ruins—a full-size Nubian named Compañero spends his days standing atop a compost pile, eating his way down. In downtime, he hangs with a miniature horse.
Goats are supposed to exert a calming influence over nervous horses, and for that reason are sometimes inserted into stables. (The expression "to get one's goat" derives from an old practice, real or imagined, of stealing a racing horse's goat friend so it will perform poorly on the track.) But Wyman and McDonnal's goat is backwardly dependent. "He freaks out" whenever the horse goes on a walk, and bleats nonstop, says Wyman. "Where's the horse? What's the horse doing? What's happening with the horse?"
Breeders recently have been thinking small. Nigerian dwarf goats, which were imported into the States in the 1980s, have achieved much popularity for their diminutive, but dairy-heavy, frames. Dwarves were tapped for the Biosphere 2 experiment in Arizona, suggesting that some day space travelers will be fighting over who has to get out of bed to milk the goat. The pocket-sized African pygmy first entered the spotlight in the 1950s with its comical, keglike frame, and it's now a big player on the local show circuit.
Although Seattleites might have had a blind spot in past decades to goats you could hoist with one hand, outlying areas are dotted with clubs devoted to little-goat competitions. The quality of pygmies, in particular, is said to be very high in the Northwest: They're smaller and more balanced than East Coast pygmies. So it's no surprise that the National Pygmy Goat Association is based in Snohomish.
Karen Crawford, a 44-year-old breeder in Graham, south of Tacoma, manages about two dozen pygmies, and each year she competes in as many as 14 pygmy-goat shows. A little room off to the side of her backyard stable is wallpapered with what must be hundreds of prize ribbons dating as far back as the mid-'90s. The stable echoes with the hair-raising cries of young pygmies: It's something between a parrot's attempt to say hello and the "Aaaagh!" of an elderly woman who just fell down the stairs.
The preparation for these shows is nothing fancy. First, there's a decade or two of crossbreeding to get just the right rump slope or elongated body style that suggests good kidding ability; then a quick trim of the tail and hooves before the animals are stuffed into carrying boxes in predawn hours. "They travel fine," says Crawford. "They go into this daze where you could be on the road for nine hours, and they just stand." Her and every other breeder's goal is to "perm out" the animals, or win the three or four grand-championship titles necessary for the creatures to retire in the sweet hay of goat Valhalla.
Ever since gentrifiers drove cows away in the early 20th century, Seattle has been racing to invite animals back into the city. The result is that we now live in one of the most diverse petting zoos on the West Coast.
