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A Minnesota family was in for quite the shock Saturday (July 30) when they found 100 goats in their backyard, according to the West Central Tribune.
South Brainerd resident Cheri Drake's son-in-law looked out the back window at about 9 p.m. on Saturday to find the yard filled with goats. “Matt, her (daughter Ashley Winterer’s) husband, got up and looked out the picture window and goes, ‘You have 100 goats in your yard.’ And I went, ‘Oh, yeah, right.’ Then we walked over there and sure enough, there were 100 goats.”
The herd was walking around and grazing on the grass, which wasn't surprising to Drake as she knew goats were used to clear invasive buckthorn in nearby Rotary Park.
“My daughter Ashley called 911 and got the dispatcher,” Drake said. “The dispatcher really thought she was just kidding. And she goes, ‘Well, some of the goats are white, some are black, some are black and white. Some are brown, brown and white. There's little goats, and there's big goats and there's a couple of baby goats, there's a pregnant goat.’ And by this time, the dispatcher is laughing.”
An officer went out to check on the situation, according to Brainerd Police Sergeant Paul Dooley.
“They went down there and called us on the radio and said there’s seriously 100 goats in this backyard,” Dooley said. “So we called animal control and his first answer was, ‘I don't deal with goats.’ So we all went down there, we found them and then figured out roughly the area through the woods where this fence was.”
The fence was a few hundred yards down a path to the park. After about 40 minutes on the scene, the officers were able to get all of the goats back in the enclosure.