Anybody Missing a Goat?

Ben is such a loving boy.  He loves to share kisses.  Especially when he does not feel good.  This last weekend he did not feel good at all, and spent the weekend loving up on all of us to try to make himself feel better.  Unfortunately the Monday Doctor appointment came back with a diagnosis of Strep Throat.  By Monday afternoon, my throat started to hurt so I stopped at the Dr. too.  Yesterday John and Randy came down with it and Noah's case was confirmed today.   Thanks Ben.  We all feel rotten.

After a horrible night Monday night, I was feeling pretty bad on Tuesday morning.   As I was pouring my coffee, I glanced out the kitchen window and kind of did a double take.   I was not sure what I saw.  There was a small animal eating grass behind the old garage.  Was it a calf, a goat, a small deer?  Maybe I just took too many drugs the night before.  The sun was not fully up, so I sent John out to take a closer look. (hey he is a boy and plus his case of strep had not been confirmed yet)  The animal ran away when he got close, but John said it had an ear tag.  I figured it must have been a neighbors calf that snuck away from the herd.   It ran back into the trees toward the direction I thought it must have come from, and we needed to leave to get John to the Dr. so I kind of forgot about it for a while.  Until I got home and saw this:

 Usually there are cats on the patio, not goats.  I opened the door to see if it was a friendly goat, and again it ran away.  Must not be that friendly.  It appears to like the left over rabbit food, as I see it by the cages quite a bit. I sent an email to as many neighbors as I could think of, but I don't know of anyone close that has goats.  Which means this one must have traveled quite a while to get here.  There is an ear tag, but I have no idea what the numbers mean.  I sent the photo below to the local extension office, but it was not a 4-H tag, so they could not help.   Too bad it does not say if lost please call...

Today when I got home from work, I did not see the goat, so I thought maybe it had moved on.  No such luck.  Now that it has found food, and a water supply it appears to be making it's self at home.  Today my phone call was to the county sheriff to see if anyone called to report a missing goat.  The dispatcher said she had files on horses, dogs, sheep, and cattle, but none on goats.    She was going to start one.

Since we have and empty barn and a pen, we decided to try to herd the goat toward the barn.   After all you just can't have a wild goat roaming around.  However,  I would like to state for the record that one sick woman and 2 sick boys, should never attempt this on their own.  All we succeeded in doing was getting the goat worked up and wearing us out.  So we left some food in the pen, in hopes that it will wander in and find it, so we can close the gate on it.    Tonight the goat is still roaming the farm.  So far I would not call him friendly, but I would also not call him aggressive.  Until we can get it rounded up, if you are in the neighborhood, please Beware of Goat.   And if by chance you are missing your goat, please come pick it up.

*Update*  We found out the goat was not a goat after all. 
It was a Mufalon sheep that escaped from a sale barn about 9 miles from our house.  The bad part was that they would not come and get it unless we could catch it.  Apparently they had tried before at a place farther south of us, which is part of the reason it made it all the way to our house. 
Anyway, we tried many times with no luck to get it in the pen.  One day our cousin Matt was over to get a mower, so I bundled up Ben and we went to ask Matt if he had any ideas about getting the goat in the pen.  The thing liked to sit down in the rocks by John's bedroom window, so I sent John around the house to flush him out so Matt could get a look at him.  Matt was putting the mower on the trailer and did not see the goat run by, but the sound of the mower must have scared the goat because it ran right into the pen.  John ran over and shut the gate, and we had it trapped.  Matt helped us do some quick fence work on the old pen to make sure the sheep did not get out, and we were successful. 
About a week later they finally came to get the sheep.  The guy showed up with a truck and a dog carrier.  I figured there was no way he could catch the sheep (very fast and very wild) let alone get it in a dog carrier.
He took one look at the pen, and said "This is a big pen".  So got a plan to trap it in the barn and he was going to try to corner it.  Once we finally got it in we shut the gate, and sure enough, that tough old farmer got the sheep cornered, walked up, put it in a headlock, and drug it out to the truck.  It was amazing.
Bye Bye goat.  Please don't come back.