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No kidding: Goats are flocking to Prospect Park.
While we're still angry at Hurricane Sandy for all of its destruction, at least one good thing is about to come out of it. A herd of goat landscapers are taking up temporary residency in Prospect Park.
The New York Times reports that the eight, green-eating cuddly machines, who normally live in a farm in Rhinebeck, N.Y., will be sequestered for a month in a northeastern section of the park called the Vale of Cashmere. Despite having a name befitting a Game of Throne’s castle, the area was referred to as an “arid waste” in an official park report in 1893. Now, thanks in part to natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, the bereaved region is something of an tree graveyard and poison ivy sanctuary.
Luckily, Olivia and Diego (the only two goat names revealed in the Times article) are ready to tear through the weeds at the impressive rate of 20 percent of their own body weight per day. The billies provide a safe way to remove the unwanted shrubs permanently without using harmful herbicides, and are approximately 10,000-times cuter than any of the picnickers also eating al fresco.
According to their goat herder and owner Larry Cihanik, the goats are a lot like human children. “They will eat their favorite foods first, and one of their top foods is poison ivy. They love it,” he says. Kids today, am I right?
The herd arrives in the vale on May 16. Check out the Prospect Park Alliance’s website for details about special events like a lecture on the farm animal, goat milk ice cream making and a parade of goats to the Prospect Park Zoo.
And really, is there any better kind of a parade than a goat parade?