Goats are such an enigma. They're supposed to be crafty, and yet here we see two of them stranded on a precarious section of a Pennsylvania overpass. The only explanation is that they wanted to be there, knew exactly what they were doing, and were irritated when some good-hearted policemen and state employees showed up to get them down.
The goat rescue happened Tuesday on the Mahoning River Bridge in western Pennsylvania. It was a unique experience for all involved.
"We've never had goats on a bridge before," Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesperson Renee Colborn told CNN.
Colborn said no one knows how the caprine thrillseekers got up on the bridge. Goats are natural perchers, and love to hang out in impossible and worrying places like trees and nearly flat rock faces, but balancing on an 8-inch ledge approximately 150 to 200 feet off the ground seems a bit excessive.
Once the goats were spotted by the state police,Pennsylvania Turnpike employees called up the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for assistance.
How did they manage such a rescue feat?
"[PennDot] had a snooper, which is a crane with a bucket on the end of it," Colborn said.
If you're having trouble picturing it, imagine a double-jointed robotic brontosaurus standing on the top of the bridge, and craning its neck down and under to get to the goats. That's exactly what it was like.
"One of the guys loaded the white goat onto the bucket first and brought it to the top of the bridge," Colborn said. The other one was less congenial and ended up hoofing it to safety by following the beam to the bridge's end.
"The brown goat was walked down because he didn't want to be touched," she added.
The goats appeared to have wandered away from a local farm, and the farmer, who was present for the daring rescue, collected his unruly children and took them back home.
Colborn said the whole operation lasted between 60 and 90 minutes.
"The goats are OK now, I suppose," she said. "Who knows what happened to them?"
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