Extra

Goat Missing From Tilden Park Farm

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday January 12, 2010 - 04:57:00 PM
Honey the goat has been missing from Tilden Park's Little Farm since Thursday, Jan. 7.
Honey the goat has been missing from Tilden Park's Little Farm since Thursday, Jan. 7.

Honey, the 16-year-old Alpine goat at Tilden Little Farm, has been missing since Thursday. The news has upset farm workers and members of Tilden’s nature education program, who are trying to figure out whether Honey’s disappearance was a prank or something more serious. 

David Zuckermann, supervising naturalist for the park, said that when farmer Stanley Ward locked for the night on Thursday, Jan. 7, he counted all nine goats in their pen. But by early Friday morning, one of them was gone. 

“And it was Honey,” Zuckermann said. “It’s rare that people mess with us—sometimes people have played a joke and we’ve recovered the animal.” Zuckermann said the farm immediatelyfiled a police report. 

“The police said it’s a felony to steal livestock,” he said. “We’ve calls in to Animal Control as well.” 

The security gates at Tilden are locked every night, according to Zuckermann, who said no one noticed any kind of foul play or vandalism Friday morning. 

“The fence wasn’t broken or anything,” he said. “She would have been a heavy goat to carry over the fence.” 

When asked whether Honey might have escaped from her pen, Zuckermann said the chances were minimal. 

“If you opened that gate and said ‘go,’ she wouldn’t go,” he said. “She’s a herd animal and wants to stay with the rest of the group. And she can’t jump over the fence.” 

Honey has a yellow ID tag with an identification number in one of her ears. 

“It’ll be easy to spot her—I mean, how many goats are walking about Berkeley everyday?” he said. “We are hopeful she will turn up, but who knows what might have happened to her.” 

Zuckermann said the Tilden community was feeling vulnerable after the incident because the park is usually regarded as a safe place. 

“It’s concerning on a number of levels,” he said. “Who would do something like this? We don’t like it at all.” 

Anyone with any information on the missing goat can call Tilden Park at 544-2233.