When I lived in Vernon, Texas, our house was next door to a laundromat. Our goats would escape on almost a daily basis and go there to hang out. The learned really quickly that there were kids there (homan ones) and that human kids usually had things to eat. They also had lots of trash. Goats love paper. People think they eat tin cans, but they don't; they eat the labels off the cans. There was a vending machine at the laundromat, so there were a lot of wrappers lying around. The owners didn't do much cleaning either. It was goat heaven.
Occasionally I would get a knock on the door asking if those were my goats next door, but usually people tolerated them or just chased them away. They rarely went out onto Wilbarger St, which was a main road through town.
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| Goat eating clothes |
One day, I went and rounded them up, only to find that Vincent van Goat had a large piece of denim hanging out of his mouth. When I went to the laundry to find out what damage Vincent had done, someone told me that Vincent had grabbed a pair of jeans out of her laundry basket and run off with it. When she finally got it back from him, there was a large piece missing. I offered to pay for the jeans but she thought it was so funny she wouldn't let me. She said she could cut off the other leg and wear them short.
Goats are browsers, not grazers. They damage grass. But they are great at trimming trees. We had several beautiful honey locust trees in our lot. The goats would stand on their back feet and eat up as far as they could reach. As a result, all the trees were nicely trimmed to an even level.
