I live in Seattle….not in a rural part of the city, but 10 minutes from downtown. My neighborhood is great: A small burg of shops and restaurants, view of the lake, wonderful small, well-kept parks, an urban heaven.
Occasionally a dog barks, a cat howls, the usual sounds of fence-to-fence living. But, this morning, the sound of goats filled the air. Yes, that’s right. Goats. 
I followed the bleating, two blocks to the south, down a small street bordered on one side by a row of lakefront homes and, on the other side, an overgrown hill. Covered with goats.
One-Hundred Forty-eight to be exact. Small, medium and large,
and all munching contentedly on the various vegetation, some of it thorn-clad, with the intensity of newborns suckling for the first time.
Across the street a tall man eaned against his car, chewing on a piece of straw like Farmer Brown.
Your goats? I asked.
Yup, he said. He pulled a card from his pocket and delivered it into my hand.
Goattrimmers.com. “Our goats are vegetation control specialists,” it read. Indeed.
The man explained that the goats were rescue goats
(resucued from what, I wondered…I didn’t want to know the details…), now employed as primary landscapers, so-to-speak. They were moved in for 2-3 days, depending on the job and the weather. It seems goats stop eating if they get rained on. The goat trimming season must be erratic, I thought, given the nature of the wetaher in Seattle. None-the-less, they ate away and in 2 days were gone…the hillside clean and ready to be tilled and planted.
The goats next gig?
On to the Museum of History and Industry.
Industry, Indeed.