"In search of the wild goat of Decorah"

A wild black goat living in the bluffs of Decorah

There are often surprises involved with being a news reporter in a small town.  One such surprise is the amount of time I have spent covering birds and animals instead of humans.

Let's see, there are the Decorah Fish Hatchery bald eagles.  I had to read up about the life cycle of eagles, from eggs to adulthood.

Then there are the various issues involving animals that the Decorah City Council is called upon to judge.  There have been noisy backyard chickens, voracious deer herds and unruly feral cats.  I don't mean to make light of these issues--it's important that city residents enjoy a good quality of life--but the issues do strike me as less serious than big-city issues about gangs and drugs and serious crime.

But now I've learned of something that calls upon all the animal husbandry and zoology information I've accumulated over the last several years--the search for the inside information about Decorah's wild goat!

You haven't heard about Decorah's wild goat?  Plenty of decorahnews.com readers apparently have.  They've asked me to get to the bottom of this story--to do a little investigative reporting about this goat and the place it calls home.

It turns out the story is a little harder to research than I thought it would be.  Yes, I've heard from several readers who say "I see it every morning when I drive to work," but this apparently is one wild goat who, like many humans, is shy around the news media.

It was only when I was complaining to my friend Dale about my lack of goat news that my luck changed.  "Let's hop in your car!" he said and, before I knew it, we were speeding down the road.

Sure enough, Dale must know the secret, because there, laying down on a ledge, was the goat, taking the least bit of notice of the traffic below.

It's my understanding the goat has lived in small caves in this bluff for at least the last two years.  I would tell you how you, too, can see the goat--but I'm not sure additional human contact is a good idea for the goat.

Maybe we can arrange something that will let the public know how the goat is doing, without disturbing the goat.  I know--coming soon, it's "Goatcam!"

Another picture of the goat