I never know what I'm going to see on my commute. As I rolled by the corner of Dearborn and Hiawatha in Seattle this evening, I stopped for a few minutes to take some pictures and chat with Tammy Dunakin. Tammy runs a business called Rent-A-Ruminant and she brought 60 goats over from Vashon Island to clear the brush from this parcel of land here in the big city. The goats seem to be having a great time and they'll have everything cleared in a couple of days.If you want to rent a goat (or 60), give Tammy a call. Her contact info is:
Tammy Dunakin, Rent-A-Ruminant, POB 1345 Vashon, WA 98070, 206-251-1051, email - tdunakin@hotmail.com
The local press wrote a story about the goats here:http://www.komotv.com/news/local/7658017.html
8 comments:
You're making me miss the Northwest! One of my favorite Portland-area rides took me past an alpaca farm - they make such an endearing nodding head movement when they notice you coming - as if to say, Oh, there you are!
I encountered the exact same situation on my commute a couple of years ago while riding through Lake Oswego, Oregon. The goats were on the scene for several days and it was amazing to watch their progress each day and see what their hard work and determination did to that forested hillside. Much more tranquil than a team of workers with brush cutters.
Rental goats are popular here in the SF Bay area as well. You can see them on grassy landfill slopes sometimes. I don't know if the goat-produced methane is bad as far as greenhouse gases go, but it's go to be better than whatever motorized mowers produce.
As Christian pointed out, the goats are quite popular in the bay area too. They are used primarily for fire safety, and at various times of the year they can be found behind temporary fencing clearing brush near residential areas in the hills. I've seen them many times on bike rides up in the Berkeley and Oakland hills.
Thanks for sharing the photos Kent! I have heard tales of this type of operation in Boulder and other places but its nice to watch them little buggers hard at work. Ira Ryans mom raises goats and sheep and such, maybe he could supplement his framebuilding income...
Aw, so cute! Can I still rent one if I don't have a yard? Do they like to jog? :D
Yep... when I was a child in the deep South, it was common to put chicken wire around a patch of briars and put goats in, and in a few days there'd be some contented goats and no briars. I never could figure out how goats could eat briars without getting their mouths messed up... but then found out that goats eat just about anything.
We hired the goats to work on a vacant lot we have. While interesting to watch and certainly novel, they didn't do a very good job, and left quite a "mess" behind which is now providing fertilizer for the weeds we wanted to be rid of! Cute, but not worth it.
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