Buddy and his 89 pals, in their first hour on the job, ate their way to two laundry baskets, three box springs and enough junk to fill a dumpster.
By Thursday evening, a quarter-acre’s worth of weeds were being digested inside sheep and goats napping near New Salishan at Portland Avenue and East 46th Street in Tacoma.
Trucks carrying reinforcements arrived Friday, and by the afternoon 200 hired ruminants were treating the First Creek watershed like a casino buffet.
Michael Mirra, executive director of Tacoma Housing Authority, explained.
“In one of THA’s more unusual recruitments, we have hired these goats to eat the weeds in First Creek ravine at Salishan,” he said. “They come with a shepherd and dogs. They will stay a week or so, eating. Apparently, it is what they do.”
Apparently.
Each goat is the natural equivalent of a chain saw, chipper and composter, except you can pet it.
“They trim to about 6 feet high,” said Don Miller, who owns Goat Trimmers in Graham, and coined its slogan, “Big or small. Our goats eat it all.”
Ivy, blackberry and morning glory have invaded the mile the goats will be working through June 5 for $550 a day.
Kye Yates of Seattle takes 8-hour shifts watching them. She’ll alternate with Miller and Grace Kilborn of Puyallup.
The women say they are shepherds by trade, but have no problem being upstaged by Paige, Leo and John, who are shepherds by instinct. They’re Miller’s border collies.
At Salishan, they monitor a motley crew.
Miller bought the goats that started the herd, but the rest, plus sheep, have happened into it.
“We get a lot of them from Puget Sound Goat Rescue,” he said.
Sometimes people beg him to take goats that looked so appealing and frisky as kids, but have since eaten the neighborhood.
With Miller, nobody meets the butcher. And, though there are coyotes on most of the land the herd clears, three Great Pyrenees dogs patrol the perimeter by night.
The Nubians, Alpines and Boers can ruminate in peace.
The Fainters can revel in unexpected safety.
Fainters, when frightened, faint. They are prized by sheep herders who prefer that predators eat the small goats instead of the sheep.
“Their job is to take one for the team,” Yates said.
There are other enemies out there, chiefly rhododendrons and tansy ragwort. So all the goats get a wellness check every night, Miller said.
“We check all their feet. We check how they’re doing,” Miller said. “If there’s a sick one, we take them back to the barn.”
Otherwise, the goats stay on site, eat for four hours, rest for two hours, and repeat.
“That’s my union goat,” Miller said, pointing to a white goat, taking her two-hour rest under a newly stripped shrub.
“That’s my PR goat,” he said as Buddy, a large black Nubian with a white patch on his belly, pranced out of the crowd. As long as people were there, he stood waiting to accept any praise, endure any pats.
Buddy also was willing to demonstrate why goats are better weeders than humans. Humans cut and pull from the bottom, so weeds can release seeds in one last vengeful act. Goats like to eat the seedy tops first, so weeds come back in fewer numbers.
Lisa Zahn, manager of the Salishan Association, is a fan of Buddy and the access he and his colleagues are creating to what, in parts, is an overgrown dump.
“We’ll have a full cleanup of this area and all of Salishan,” she said. “Salishan Clean Up is scheduled for Saturday, July 11th, with a barbecue to follow.”
Anyone is welcome to play that day, and to see the goats at work through next Friday during daylight hours. To find them, go to the southern edge of Salishan, through the open gate marked “Do Not Enter” and on to the vehicles parked by woods’ edge.
“We love to show what our goats do,” Yates said. “We love visitors.”
So does Buddy.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
