Firefighting goats escape, wreak ‘havoc’ on California neighborhood

A group of nearly 200 goats roamed the streets of a California neighborhood after breaking through a fence Tuesday. 

Zach Roelands, a witness to the debacle, tweeted a video of the goats traipsing through the San Jose neighborhood. 

“When I got back from the store all the goats had broken through the fence and were [wreaking] havoc on our street,” he tweeted. “This is the craziest thing to happen all quarantine.”

I’m dead ☠️ When I got back from the store all the goats had broken through the fence and were recking havoc on our street 

This is the craziest thing to happen all quarantine  pic.twitter.com/Hc7XpuiBdT

— Zach Roelands (@zach_roelands) May 13, 2020

The video was retweeted more than 15,000 times as of Wednesday afternoon. 

Terry Roelands, Zach’s father, told NBC Bay area he uses the goats a few times a year to clean the brush on a hill behind his home after it caught on fire about 15 years ago. 

This week, one of the goats was eating flowers over a fence and managed to tap one of the electric fences, causing it and others around it to break the boards, Terry Roelands told the outlet. The break allowed the goats to escape into the neighborhood. 

Zach Roelands told The Mercury News the goats were rounded up relatively quickly after they got out around 5:30 p.m. 

Asked on Twitter if the goats eating the grass saved the work of having to mow the lawn, Zach Roelands responded that the goats had the opposite effect. 

“They ate all the plants and pooped all over the grass. You know, more fertilizer so I’ll have to mow it twice as often,” he tweeted.