Have you noticed? Goats are ubiquitous. I noticed right after viewing the Doritos Superbowl ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d8ZDSyFS2g) conceived by two Connecticut gents from Simsbury. (Spoiler Alert) I can't get enough of the human screams emanating from the angry goat (wait for it at :18) and apparently neither can three and half million other people who have since viewed that spot again. I immediately shared it with my media class (for our unit on advertising, no really) who simultaneously erupted into deep guttural laughter and high pitched shrieks of surprised joy then asked for more. That spot seems to have struck a chord with a whole herd of humans out to milk the joke for all its worth. Graze through the goat oeuvre on youtube and you'll find goats screaming like humans, goats yelling like humans, goats screaming like humans (compilation), goats that sound like people, goats talking like people, goats singing happy birthday, goats singing Christmas carols, and the latest craze, goats yelling in the middle of Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift songs (although there is some recent controversy over whether it's actually a goat or a sheep.) At any rate, it seems a great portion of our nation is obsessed with goats.
Perhaps the nation's greatest obsession with goats came in the form of the US government's 1979 experimental training program First Earth Battalion, which aimed to tap the psychic potential of soldiers to kill debleated goats using only their minds. This military foray into the paranormal is thoroughly documented in the Jon Ronson book, The Men Who Stare at Goats (film adaptation starring a bearded George Clooney). Those who could kill a goat simply by staring at it for weeks on end were poised to be our greatest generation of perfected soldiers, which perhaps explains why all wars since the 1970s seem to have gone slightly awry (though one participant claims to have successfully stared both his goat and hamster to death). Most assassins don't have the luxury of staring at their target for weeks on end. People with that kind of time to spend with goats tend to be lonely goatherds whose primary goal is corralling, not staring, at them as they graze.
Speaking of corralling, my brother the maple syrup king of Massachusetts (Windsor Hill Sugar House), corrals his hobby farmer goats in the former dog run attached to the back of the house. His goats readily come up to the kitchen window for occasional pass through scraps and also proudly stand atop the dog house from which the dogs have been evicted. One Thanksgiving we were gathered round the table in the dining room with non goat acculturated friends when one of the goats meandered through the house in search of food, having butted in the back kitchen door to gain entry. After chowing down on the available dog food in Bandit's bowl, Peanut (or maybe Spike) climbed up onto the couch for a nap. We were unfazed, our guests not so much. In the best of Thanksgiving traditions, goats, like humans, consume everything in their path. Sometimes they even become the consumed.
Remember in Jurassic Park as the visitors, including the lawyer, the paleontologist, the mathematician, and the grandchildren, sit astride the empty T-Rex paddock waiting to view Mr. Hammond's reluctant to appear genetically enhanced phantasm? In an effort to entice the beast, a trap door is raised to which is chained a pure white goat. It takes a second for the intention to register but we see the terror dawn on young Lexie as she realizes what's at stake. In tremulous voice she utters, "He's gonna eat the goat?" You said it, baby. Trouble. (Click play) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLI4EuDckgM
It's one thing to eat a bleating goat. It's quite another to eat that goat's Doritos.
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