A pygmy teacup goat is hiding out in California from a bear and a Powell, Wyoming, city ordinance, the goat’s owner says.
Venus Bontadelli sued the city of Powell in the federal U.S. District Court for Wyoming in November, saying the town’s original denial last summer of her exotic pet permit was unconstitutional.
She’d applied for the permit so she could keep her domesticated pygmy teacup goat named Porsche Lane at her home in a light industrial-zoned neighborhood in Powell.
That was after she moved to Wyoming from what she called “Commie-fornia,” thinking Wyoming would have more individual liberty-friendly governance, Bontadelli told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
Bontadelli confirmed that she reached a settlement with the city Thursday.
The agreement says she is to receive an exotic pet permit that's valid for five years, Bontadelli added.
Around the time they denied Bontadelli’s permit, Powell authorities said they were limited by the words of the city’s ordinance.
Bontadelli’s lawsuit, conversely, asserted that the city denied her of procedural due process and substantive due process rights. It quoted from Article 1, Section 7 of the Wyoming Constitution, which reads:
“Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.”
Powell’s mayor and city council members did not return Cowboy State Daily email requests for comment by publication time.
… And A Bear
Bontadelli said that Porsche Lane has been staying in California with one of Bontadelli’s best friends during the lawsuit.
She didn’t want to lose the goat over any permitting fallout, said Bontadelli, harkening 2024 news stories of a New York man’s pet squirrel, Peanut, which local authorities seized and euthanized to test for rabies, shocking the squirrel’s owner’s social media followers.
Though Porsche Lane isn’t facing a local ban at the California friend’s house, she does risk being eaten by a bear in the neighborhood, Bontadelli said.
“And unfortunately, because she’s in California, just like the homeless, the bears have more rights,” said Bontadelli.
The “nuisance bear” keeps encroaching onto the friend’s property, eating her chickens and her hog — and there’s little the friend can do to prevent it, she added. But Bontadelli said her friend has been pampering Porsche Lane and generally keeping her indoors.
She said she’s excited to have her goat back, and she’ll be relieved once she does.
"I just want to get her back here, before the bear is allowed to take her as well, while she's out," Bontadelli said.
She added gratitude for her attorney Austin Waisanen of the Pacific Legal Foundation, and said she hopes her case will inspire more emphasis on individual freedom in Powell local governance.
“The Constitution doesn’t stop cities from regulating animals,” said Waisanen in a Thursday email. “But it does require government to tell people what the rules are. This settlement makes clear that permits can’t be denied on a whim.”
Powell’s legal counsel in this case, the Wyoming Local Government Liability Pool, reported that the case attorney was not in the office Friday, but confirmed that the LGLP did not pay any money as part of the settlement.
Bontadelli said her permit under the settlement will last five years before she'd have to ask for a renewal, which gives her time to seek a home outside city limits. She also doesn't know if the city could change the ordinance or make it more restrictive later, she said.
Her goal to keep Porsche Lane is the chief reason Bontadelli seeks to move into the country, she said.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
