The renegade goat of west Lincoln was elusive.
The city’s Animal Control officers started getting calls about it — brown-and-white, maybe a dwarf, maybe not — Nov. 8.
The goat is up in the girders beneath the Southwest 40th Street bridge, spanning the tracks along West O Street. The goat is in a field near the county jail. The goat is moving east into the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railyards.
The goat would not go easy.
“We’ve been working to get it secured. But they’re difficult to catch because they have four legs and we only have two — so they’re a lot faster than us,†said Animal Control officer Nick Finelli.
And this wasn’t Animal Control officers’ first rodeo.
They’d spent nearly three months — early August through early November — chasing after a white goat that was hanging out near Shoemaker’s truck stop and Interstate 80, just eight blocks to the west.
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It’s unclear if the goats were related, said Animal Control director Steve Beal.
“Animal Control has not had anybody call and say, ‘I’m missing a goat,’†he said. “So we don’t know where either of these came from.â€
And it’s also unclear what happened to the white goat; the last report came Nov. 4.
But the brown-and-white goat kept attracting attention. The railroad called Animal Control about it Thursday. And the animal appeared again Saturday, grazing outside a train yard office building, Finelli said.
This time, four Animal Control officers — Rachael Middleton, Bryce Gruhn, Faith Steen and Finelli — responded, arranging their cruisers in a semicircle, then collapsing the perimeter to corner the animal.
“We kind of moved in on his territory, so he didn’t have anywhere to go because the building was to his back,†Finelli said. “And then we were able to secure him.â€
The goat, for now, is living in a barn at the Capital Humane Society. Finelli estimated the animal had been on its own for a month.
“He looked pretty good. He looked healthy. So he was doing something right out there.â€