A well-dressed baby goat is back to bounding around his Campbell County property after falling into an 8-foot-deep sump drain pipe over the weekend.
The goat, wearing a snazzy blue bow tie in celebration of Easter on Sunday, made a wrong step and found itself at the bottom of a narrow, corrugated plastic pipe a few feet from a house, the Campbell County Fire Department reports.
“This goat rescue is pretty unique,” said fire marshal and department spokesman Stuart Burnham on Wednesday morning. “I don’t recall we ever rescued a goat before.”
While it’s not a usual thing for firefighters to be called out to rescue animals, it does happen once in a while, Burnham said, adding that saving them always seems to boost morale.
“The firefighters are really happy when they’re able to help and be part of a call like this,” he said.
Sunday’s goat rescue may be a first for the Campbell County Fire Department, but it’s responded to other unique animal rescues in the past, Burnham said.
“A couple years ago, there was a horse that fell through a pond and we were able to help cut the ice to give the horse a path to get out of the water,” he said.
“There have also been a few times when some ducks fell into a storm drain and somebody noticed and contacted the fire department,” Burnham added. “The crews in those cases were able to take the storm drain grate off and pick up the small birds and get them out.”
‘Healthy And In Good Spirits’
Sunday was busy all around for the northeast Wyoming department, and “our crews stayed busy responding to multiple calls around the county,” the agency reports.
“One unique call involved a goat that had fallen approximately 8 feet down into a sump drainpipe,” the report says. “Our crews quickly went to work, lowering webbing down and carefully securing it around the goat.”
Photographs of the rescue posted to the department’s Facebook page show a wide strap of orange webbing firefighters managed to get around the goat’s belly.
“With a coordinated effort, the goat was safely hoisted back to the surface,” the report says, adding that, “We’re happy to report the goat appeared healthy and in good spirits after the rescue.”
Yup, They Also Get Cats
Getting the dapper little goat out safely was a best-case scenario, Burnham said, but it’s also a reminder for people to check around their property for potential pitfalls. If a hole or pipe is large enough for a goat, it’s also large enough for a small child to fall into.
“We always encourage people take preventative measures,” he said. “As a general rule of thumb, it’s good to walk around and make sure everything looks good and reduce those hazards.”
During the regular day-to-day responses to fires, out-of-control burns, traffic accidents and medical emergencies, there’s something emotionally satisfying in the occasional successful animal rescue, Burnham said.
“There have been various calls over the years. It’s not common, but we’ll always give it our best effort to get them out,” he added.
That includes the stereotypical call to get someone’s cat out of a tree. That has happened, Burnham said, and when it does, it’s a job for the firefighters on the low end of the totem pole.
“Usually, it’s the new firefighters who get the short straw on that one,” he said, adding that, “I may or may not have had an experience with that before.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
