Goats escape fire inWine Country
Debi Emery has no doubt that her late grandmother played a role in protecting a small herd of goats fromthe unforgiving flames of a fire raging out of control.
As the Atlas fire burned through Wine Country earlier this week, the goats were trapped inside their pen. All around them were flames, devouring homes and killing livestock, but when the fire marched on, leaving ash and embers behind it, the pen and the goats remained unmarked.
The goats, owned by Napa Goats, a company that rents out domestic goats for weed and vegetation control, had been boarding on the property at the end of Shady Oaks Drive in Napa.
The house had been vacant following the death of Emery’s grandmother, Jewell “Judy” Tucker, but when the woman was alive, Emery says, she loved watching the little goats frolic in her field.
“In fact,” Emery says, “one baby, born there just before she passed, was named ‘Jewell,’ after her. I’d like to think it was her hand reaching down from heaven and sheltering these animals and that little pen, which in past years had been their family garden.”
Bay Area News Group photographer Jose Carlos Fajardo came upon the amazing scene on Monday, while he and reporter Erin Baldassari were viewing the devastation toWine Country. Fajardo photographed one of the goats, separated from the others, that sat in stunned silence amid the ruins of the once fine homes. Fajardo then wrangled the goat back into the pen with its sisters.
Emery, herself a Napa resident and evacuee, says she had been desperate trying to get onto the property and to return to her own undamaged home. She begged members of the media, without success, to take her with them, but she finally persuaded Animal Control to escort her in.
The goats all seemed well, Emery says, including the one rescued by Fajardo.
The owner of Napa Goats, Emery says, had apparently gone to the area ahead of the fire, rescuing a pony and a neighbor’s horse. He also brought the herd of goats in from a larger pasture and put them in the pen that had been used to quarantine sick or pregnant animals.
He planned to return for the goats and to help save any other animals he could, but the fire moved in too quickly. He returned after the fire passed, Emery says, finding most of his goats had survived.
Tucker had first met the owner of Napa Goats a few years ago, when she was trying creative ways to deal with weeds and create a defensive zone around the property, Emery says. The goats were efficient, and cute.
Tucker and her husband, George, moved to Napa from Texas in the mid-1930s. She was a wellknown teacher, a member of the Retired Teachers Association, University Women and a member of Crosswalk Church. She also volunteered at Community Projects until shortly before her death in 2013 at age 98.
The couple bought the 3½-acre property on Shady Oaks Drive in the 1960s, calling it their little farm in the country. They built a modest, two- bedroom ranch style house, and while it was not a grand home, it was to Emery, who spent summers there as a child, and returned often for holidays, family parties and reunions.
“Until early Monday morning, the creek side was also my zen, the place I would on occasion still return to formy quiet contemplative time,” Emery says. “While I’m saddened that those times are over, I am sure she would tell me ‘not to fret,’ she didn’t need the house anymore. And that is true, but I’m sure something guarded over those goats in that pen that night and I can’t help think somehow, from heaven, she had a hand in it.”
Tucker continued to live in the home after George died in 1987. Living alone, Emery says, her grandmother grew fond of the goats and the owner would bring the newborn kids into the house for her to hold.
Emery was moved by the goats’ miraculous survival, and the story has helped blunt but not erase her frustrations that residents still are not being allowed to return to their homes and care for their animals.
“After being displaced since the tragedy occurred that night, and seeing the devastation when I visited the site briefly,” she says, “it is little miracles like these that keep me going.”