Livestock on the lam

SUMMERVILLE, Ga. — Two goats eluded Chattooga County authorities for more than a week until they got stuck in a culvert and their owner was alerted on Twitter.

Now the county sheriff said his officers are ready to start writing tickets for loose livestock.

Over about 10 days in July, Chattooga animal control personnel and sheriff’s deputies received several calls from residents complaining about a couple of goats running loose in the Taylor’s Ridge area.

Every time law enforcement went out to capture the critters, the goats either had disappeared or they ran where officers couldn’t follow.

“When we got there, they’d just shoot up [a] cliff where we couldn’t get them,” said animal control officer Aubrey Smith.

The officers finally got their goats when the animals became stuck in a drainage culvert. The Summerville News posted a Twitter message saying the goats had been caught. A farmer who was two goats short of a flock saw the message and claimed them.

Though no one was harmed, Chattooga County Sheriff John Everett said the episode underscores the problem of livestock escaping through failed fences and running loose. The goat farmer was not charged, but the sheriff said tickets could cost negligent farmers as much as $500.

“When there are continuous calls to the same places, something’s got to be done,” Everett said.

In August, a Summerville resident was killed on U.S. Highway 27 in Floyd County when his car ran into a horse early one morning. No one ever claimed the horse, according to Everett.

On county backroads, where streetlights are few and far between, livestock can be near invisible to drivers, Smith said.

“A black cow at night is going to look just like asphalt until you see its eyes, and then it’s too late,” he said.

Deputies say they’ve been called out to wrangle horses, cows, goats and a hog in Chattooga County this year, but that the numbers aren’t any higher than normal.

Smith said the loose livestock problem normally gets worse in August and September when the weather is dry and animals have a tougher time finding grass.

“As the grass supply gets lower, they go hunting for greener grass,” he said.

Walker County animal control officer Curtis Patterson said his county is seeing the same “ongoing problem” and, like Chattooga, most of the loose animals come from a handful of neglectful farms.

“I don’t know if it’s [the expense of a fence] or laziness or what,” Patterson said. “A lot of them are old fences that they just repair instead of replacing them.”

Chattooga County farmer Pete Denson said the fines sound steep but fair, as long as deputies focus on repeat offenders and not one-time accidents.

“If he gets a call five days a week for two or three weeks for my cows, I’m deserving for a ticket,” he said.

Denson said he replaced all his fencing about 10 years ago. He owns about 100 cows on 250 acres and said it’s been four or five months since he had a cow get out.

Some escapes are inevitable, he said, because something as simple as a tree falling can knock down the wire.