Hamilton kid wanders off, pigs out with neighbours
A baby goat who slipped from a stake and went for an hours-long joyride around Mount Hope last Monday has been reunited with a pair of thankful — and lucky — owners.
Piper, a six-month-old Boer doe goat, disappeared from a pasture on Aeropark Boulevard in the midst of a gusty windstorm at about 7 p.m.
An hour earlier, Jordan Giggi, who rents the pasture with her wife, tethered Piper to a stake to graze for the night. She left a dog next to her to fend off any predators. But by morning, the young goat was gone without a trace.
“Her collar and her tether were gone, too,” said Giggi, who picked up Piper and another goat just last week. “We didn’t find any traces of a coyote either. There was no scuffle, no nothing — she was just gone.”
Giggi and her wife drive from their downtown Hamilton home to the pasture every morning to feed the goats.
Piper’s disappearance, however worrying, wasn’t entirely unusual. Giggi said Piper tries to follow the couple every time they depart for the night. Plus, she was likely spooked by the howling winds.
But the couple began to fret early Tuesday morning when they spent two hours canvassing the area.
“A lot of panic (set in),” said Giggi. “My wife was crying. We were very upset.”
But optimism never waned. Piper is so friendly, Giggi added, such a “happy, little thing, that she’s going to come back if she’s out there.”
She came back, all right. But not on her own doing.
Turns out, Piper had meandered to a home just steps from the pasture — “not a barn, so we didn’t knock on their door,” Giggi said — and slept with pigs while chomping on chicken food overnight.
Giggi connected with the people who found Piper through Reddit, a medium which has come in handy for Hamiltonians needing help finding valuable belongings.
“She wandered into their backyard at around 7 (p.m.) and they were, like, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s a goat. Where did that come from?’ ” Giggi said of the finders, who declined to be interviewed.
“They have chickens and pigs, so they threw her in with the pigs and she spent the night eating everything in sight — because that’s her favourite thing to do.
“She would’ve been happy to eat chicken food all day.”