More Evidence That Goats Are a Good Municipal Investment

There's no better way for a city to garner amusing headlines than by whipping out a bunch of goats for lawn-clearing duty. It happened this year in Seattle when the local transportation department used ruminants to eat unwanted brush ("Getting Their Goat"), last August when D.C. did the same in Congressional Cemetery ("The Kids Are Alright"), and that same month when the barnyard animals munched their way through O'Hare ("Goats Help 'Baaaa-ttle' Brush at Chicago Airport").

But there's another reason that cities keep flooding their land with goats. These bounding, human-voiced animals are extremely good at what they do—which is eating everything in sight. Their ironclad tongues and guts make quick work of tough or hazardous vegetation that humans struggle to control, such as blackberry tangles and poison ivy. Sure, they sometimes slack off to stand on top of each other, but under the supervision of a good herder they're a miracle for brush-clearing.