Pictou County golf course owner locates freedom-loving goat
Another still on the lam
Louise has been apprehended, but Thelma continues to elude capture. Brian Affleck, owner of a petting zoo at his Eagle’s Chance golf centre in Mount William, was able to corral one of his missing goats on Tuesday morning and was hoping to soon bring the second one home, too.
“Thelma’s still on the loose,” said Affleck.
The saga started on Oct. 17, when Affleck, who uses the petting zoo as a side business to his golf facility, had purchased two female goats to hook them up with Bubba, his billy goat. But when Affleck was getting ready to pen them up the day he brought them to Mount William, the two females got spooked, ran off and had been enjoying their freedom ever since.
At times, the crafty beasts were tantalizingly close to being caught, but had managed to evade their pursuers, happy with all the twigs and leaves they could find in the woods over that way.
“They’ve been seen the last couple of weeks over in Alma,” Affleck said.
So he set up a shelter/trap for them last weekend and baited it with feed — also putting down some some hay and straw to provide comfort and warmth — and he has been making several trips each day, to see if he could find them inside the netting.
“We started putting feed in it for them and they started coming to it. They have one way in and one way out,” said Affleck.
He was almost able to capture both of them at the same time on Tuesday, but Thelma was able to bolt while a cornered Louise ran back into the netted trap, where she was captured.
Affleck said it’s likely fortunate that Louise was the one he got ahold of; she’s more of a follower and might have been lost without her older cohort.
“There’s a lot of luck to it. I was talking to an old farmer and he said they can survive on almost nothing in the winter as long as they have a warm place to sleep.”