Watch out, there’s a new kid on the promenade
HALLE B-aaa-rry appears to be a dog, in fox terrier colours, harnessed and walking the beachfront beside her owner Yolande Els.
But the young goat is not even acting like a dog. A goat’s habits are completely different, Els told the Independent on Saturday.
“I thought I could understand a goat but she’s not like a horse or a dog. She doesn’t have a complex that makes her want to please me, like a dog would,” explained Els, an animal lover who also has five cats, a dog and two horses that are all rescue animals.
“Halle B-aaa-rry is a stubborn little creature but she’s gorgeous.”
Els found her abandoned, 2km into a trail run she was doing at Giba Gorge late in January.
“I saw this little thing sitting on the side of the path, so I stopped and asked ‘what are you doing here?’ She jumped up and started suckling on my shoelaces.
“When I picked her up her umbilical cord was still on, so she must have been abandoned.”
Els took Halle B-aaa-rry to the vet. “She was very malnourished. “She was put on an intravenous (drip) for five hours.”
Els said when people saw a goat on the beachfront, they often think it is there to be sacrificed in a ritual. “Then they see the harness on her.” It took a while for Halle B-aaa-rry to get used to the beachfront promenade.
“She was used to walking in Giba on rocks and eating leaves.
“Here at the beach there are a lot of people. There is concrete. Initially she hated it. And now she rules the prom. If I take off this leash she runs backwards and forwards.
“That shows she is confident because if she wasn’t, she would stick close to me. Initially she wouldn’t leave my side.
“Now I almost have to keep her on the leash because she has such a lovely time here. I’ll normally walk 2.5km down, back to the car and she has had her exercise for the day.”
Back home in the Upper Highway area, to many of her friends’ surprise Els has a lawn unaffected by Halle B-aaarry’s eating habits.
“Goats are actually browsers, so my grass looks amazing and I don’t have many bushes. If I had many plants and bushes they would be destroyed. She has not yet started to climb trees.”
However, the Els residence in Winston Park has to be Halle B-aaa-rryproofed: “As she gets older we have to lift things as we would with a toddler. I was out at work but my daughter was at home when Halle B-aaa-rry knocked the wi-fi rooter into the washing dish.
“We hadn’t yet Halle B-aaa-rryproofed the counter.”
Els added that goats display “king of the castle” behaviour where they want to be as high as possible.
“If I leave her alone in the house, she is going to start looking for things to climb. You can’t get upset with goats when they start to look for new ‘cliffs’.”