Almost 200 goats were seen roaming the empty streets of East San Jose, California, amid the lockdown, breaking all “social distancing rules”; the footage has since gone massively viral and raised donations to fight hunger.
Local resident Zach Roelands tweeted the footage on May 12, 2020, of the goats flooding into driveways and front yards as their shepherds try to contain them, describing it as “the craziest thing to happen all quarantine.” The video of the goats wreaking “havoc” has since gained over 4 million views and raised around US$4,000 in donations for food banks.
Roelands said that the goats are brought in every year with the approach of California’s dreaded fire season to a fenced-off hillside behind the Silver Creek neighborhood to eat the grass and help reduce fire danger, reported The Mercury News.
These furry grazing specialists were brought after machines failed at the task.
“We had a tractor try to cut all the weeds a few years ago and it hit a rock and set the whole hill on fire,” Roelands said in the report.
Roelands told USA Today that goats somehow escaped the fence that surrounds the pen to keep them well contained and got into the neighborhood. “They jumped up and ... broke through the fence,” Roelands said.
Illustration - Aggie 11/Shutterstock
Needless to say that Roelands’s now-viral video, hilarious caption, and the special visitors ended up breaking the monotony of life under lockdown.
Rick Singer, a neighbor, responded to Roelands’s tweet by posting a picture of the goats browsing just behind his property. “They love this one bush in my backyard,” Singer wrote. “I feed them every year. And play them peaceful, classical music on our outdoor speakers...”
One social media user asked Roelands if the visit from the goats entailed a free lawn mowing, to which he responded, “Nope they ate all the plants,” adding that they left droppings all over the grass. “You know, more fertilizer...” Roelands said.
While the entire breakout ended quickly after a rancher and his golden retriever managed to get the escaped animals back in their pen, the incident provided plenty of hilarity for Twitter users.
Many responded to the video with puns of varying quality. One user even made a controversial COVID-19 reference, writing “[t]hey’re working on Herd Immunity.”
Roelands took his internet fame that the video generated to direct people’s attention to a vital cause. He posted a link to the organization Feeding America, which makes donations to food banks that help hungry families around the country. Within just 48 hours of the humorous invasion, his campaign had raised almost US$4,000.
Donors to the campaign have even included, appropriately enough, “Zach Roelands’ Goats.” In addition to keeping the neighborhood safe from fires and providing some much-needed entertainment, it would seem that the goats have also done their part to fight hunger.
