I never gave goats a thought until last spring when I read Joyce Renwick‘s posthumous short-story volume In Praise of What Persists. A goat stars in the story “The Goat.”  “I kept finding the goat wandering in the dining room, or standing on the front room fireplace mantel just like she was wild on some mountainside…”

Not long after I read “The Goat,” Todd and I were standing on an inlet of the Chesapeake Bay at our town home development, Wood’s Landing, and, looking across to houses not too distant, noticed a new small wire fence. Then a goat appeared within the fenced area, then another and another. Someone was using goats to clear the land.

A few weeks later I was taking my long walk that serves as exercise on non-gym days and, on the edge of Wood’s Landing, within the same or a similar small wire fence, milled a herd of goats. I went back the next day with my camera, but the goats and the fence were gone.

The photo above is from Eco-Goats, the source, I believe, of my reality-imitating-fiction, goat-wise.

I invite you to see my review of Joyce Renwick’s short-story volume In Praise of What Persists on the blogzine Late Last Night Books.