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Picnic in the park

Posted on July 30, 2009August 4, 2009 by Staff

Photo by Kirk Ross.by Beth Mechum
Staff Writer

The Goat Patrol doesn’t need a lunch break. Its entire day is a lunch break.

And the business works out such that it benefits all interested parties.

The dog park at Hank Anderson Community Park now has a lot less poison ivy and the goats are to be thanked for that. A baaaahhhh is what you’ll get in response – the same sound heard around the park last Tuesday and Wednesday, as Goat Patrol human coordinator Alix Bowman watched her goats clear the land without the use of any pesticides or noisy machinery.

Bowman said the goats have the same hours as most landscapers and are even more efficient in getting to the hard-to-reach places.

“The goats are often less expensive and get into a lot of stuff other workers wouldn’t want to touch,” she said.

What’s poisonous to humans can be dessert to goats. But they don’t eat just anything. Bowman comes out to survey the land to make sure what needs to be cleared is something the goats will want to nibble on.

“It’s great for the goats, because they should have a variety of plants to eat,” Bowman said, “and so in doing this, they’re exposed to a lot of different types of vegetation and they enjoy it.”

The goats come in and do the clearing away; it’s then up to the city to maintain it.

“They’re not landscapers; they’re not going to neatly trim your hedges into animal shapes,” Bowman said.

On Wednesday morning, David Poythress, street superintendent with the town’s public works department, was at Anderson Park taking a few snapshots of the results and mingling with the patrol as they worked back through to clean up an area cleared Tuesday.
As the goats gobbled up the last bits of a large patch of poison ivy — even rearing up on hind legs to reach higher up the tree trunks – Poythress said he was impressed.

“If you want to get an idea of the difference,” he said, “check out the area farther down where they haven’t been yet.”

A few moments later, the patrol was herded into the as-yet-untouched area. Though thick with vegetation, the degree of munching that ensued indicated that was about to change.

Bowman noted that she didn’t come up with the Goat Patrol concept: she heard about it while living on the West Coast.

“I thought goats would really fit well in this area, with everything from the vegetation to the climate to the social atmosphere in the Triangle,” she said. “And it’s been very warmly received.”

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