Police in rural Oklahoma responded to what seemed to be cries for help this week. But nobody was bleeding, only bleating.
Police in the city of Enid responded to a report of someone calling for help. Two officers arrived on the scene, where they heard what sounded like a distinct cry for help. They rushed to the source of the sound, only to find that the damsel in distress was more of a nanny; a goat who was upset he was taken out of his barn.
“Sometimes a call can really get your goat,” the Enid Police Department captioned a video on its Facebook page. “Yesterday, Officer David Sneed and Officer Neal Storey responded to a report of someone heard yelling for help. Upon arriving, the officers began walking toward the faint sound of someone yelling. As they got closer, Officer Sneed could hear a distinct yell for ‘help.’ Running toward the sound, the two soon discovered their damsel in distress was a very upset goat, who the farmer explained, had been separated from one of his friends.”
The video begins with bodycam footage of one of the officers walking along a trail, listening to the sound. “I think that’s a person,” one of the officers says. “That’s a person,” the officer repeats. In the distance, a sound which appears to be someone shouting can be heard; the officers run toward the sound. “It’s a goat,” the officer in front says. The two officers run through some trees and come upon the farm, where the goat can be heard bleating discontentedly, in a way that sounds like “help.” “Aww, it is,” the officer laughs.
The officers walk up to the farmer and explain the situation. “We didn’t know if it was an animal or a person,” the officer says through laughter. “But sure enough, we were walking over here and I’m like, ‘that’s a person.’ From long distance it sounds like ‘help.'”
The Facebook post thanked the two officers for acting swiftly, even if unnecessary in the end. “All in all, you really can’t say it was that baaad of a call,” it said.
A goat in California was the subject of a lawsuit last month after law enforcement had to track it down. California mom Jessica Long is suing officials from the Shasta County District Fair after law enforcement officials seized a goat that belonged to her daughter. The goat was auctioned off and set to be slaughtered, but Long kidnapped the goat during the fair, forcing officials to obtain a search warrant to get it back.
After a long exchange between Long and County Fair officials in which she refused to return the goat, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office filed a search warrant affidavit for permission to seize the goat.
The search warrant said that property had been “stolen or embezzled” and was being held at a farm; it permitted police to “utilize breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers”; and it listed areas to search, including “[t]he residence, including all rooms, attics, basements, and other parts therein, the surrounding grounds and any garages, sheds, storage rooms, and outbuildings of any kind large enough to accommodate a small goat.”
Long is suing the Sheriff’s office, the county, the fair, and others involved in the slaughter in federal court. It alleges that officials improperly used their authority and connections and wasted police resources by pressing criminal charges instead of handling the matter civilly.
