I had an, er, interesting toy hunt this evening. I left early to hit a couple of Targets in search of the last cups, and as I drove down the street towards Target, past the freeway on ramp, I see, behind the restaurant that shares the Target parking lot, a herd of goats.
Not a couple of goats, but a LOT. They were running in a herd around the restaurant, pulling up flowers and gnawing at all the bushes underneath the windows. The restaurant is up against a wire fence that divides the property from the freeway onramp, which is a big cloverleaf with two entrances. The goats were running in circles around the building, onto the sidewalk, then around to the back fence again. No one is with them, and I'm trying to figure out, as I pull into the lot (its shared with Target, remember) what is going on -- like is it a petting zoo, or a truck was unlocked, or something. But there's at least a hundred of the things.
I walked around to the street and down to the onramp, where the goats are racing along the fence. I see them make a u-turn around the fence, onto the freeway onramp. They cross the road an into the center, where there's nothing but brown grass, and proceed to... graze. I'm basically standing in the middle of them on the sidewalk as this is going on, and there's no one doing anything about it, like its perfectly fine. And they keep coming... just a constant flow of goats onto the freeway ramp. Then... the dog. Along comes one of those little herding dogs.
bull****? Nope:
So, no cops show up, and it ends up being me and three other people trying to keep the dog (who is running up and down the road herding the goats together in the center) and the goats that are streaming in from being hit by cars. Ten minutes go by and some guy comes out from the restaurant, and yells, in Spanish, and the goats come RUNNING BACK across the road to the fence, and he spends the next five minutes getting them all on the other side of the fence, behind the restaurant and up another hill that lines the freeway.
Apparently, in hippy-ass San Francisco, its environmentally friendly to use goat herds to clear drybrush instead of evil, gas-powered mowers or unholy pestisides. So, goats running free is fine.
WTF.
