Word: goat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...squawking hen "the urban-farming gateway animal," the first occupant of a big metropolitan menagerie. Among eco-foodies, the hottest urban livestock bleat, quack, gobble, oink, buzz and ... well, whatever noise rabbits make. Just ask the folks at Seattle Tilth, a composting and gardening nonprofit that this summer added goat sheds and pens to its long-standing local chicken-coop tour. Or ask the participants in Detroit's Garden Resource Program, which recently launched beekeeping classes and saw them fill up immediately. Even the so-called Chicken Whisperer, a.k.a. Andy Schneider, who hosts an urbane chicken radio show six days...
...course, not everyone wants to get that close to their food sources. Dwarf goats in particular have been a point of contention. They smell bad and can wreak havoc if they escape, opponents say; some also worry that allowing goats will pave the way for legalizing llamas and cows in cities. Goat advocates, who note that only horned males emit musk, say the ruminants are gentle enough to be walked on a leash and that they generate high-quality manure, which can be used as fertilizer...
...heated debates in city-council meetings over the definitions of livestock, small animals and farm animals. The result: a hodgepodge of animal-ownership laws across the nation and even within a state. This spring in North Carolina, for example, Asheville voted to allow temporary permits for goats to clear vegetation, while Charlotte banned them from properties smaller than a quarter of an acre - despite supporters showing up at a city-council meeting with signs reading I LOVE MY PYGMY GOAT...
Those enthusiasts may have taken a page from the godmother of goat lovers, Jennie Grant, owner of Brownie and Snowflake, who founded the Goat Justice League two years ago while pushing Seattle to legalize miniature goats. It is now permissible to have three on a 5,000-sq.-ft. lot, and some city departments have hired goats to clear blackberry brambles. "Part of my lobbying effort included bringing fresh chèvre to city-council members' offices," she says...
...thoughtful conversation about premature human babies, the risks they face and the possibility that saving ailing preemies isn't always merciful. It was one of her most fulfilling days as an educator, Andrews says. "If we have one of those discussions a year, it's worth having a goat - or 10 goats - at the school...