The Bay Bridge Flock

 

Snapshot of the foraging herd!     Photo: © Stan Banos

I live on the outskirts of downtown San Francisco now, and one of my usual cruise patterns has me going from South Park,* past the entrance to the Bay Bridge and on to the Embarcadero, where I usually purchase a loaf of any of a variety of delicious ACME breads at the Ferry Building. It's but one of my well established routines that also contains Pier 24. Now on this particular weekend afternoon, I almost swallowed my stogie whole as I casually glanced to my left and saw the side of the on ramp swarming with... GOATS! What the?!?  

But there they were, buzzing about the incline doing their thing, musta been around a hundred of the critters- I kid you not! I just stood there, gobsmacked, mouth agape... Eventually, I gathered myself and proceeded with my daily constitutional (if only every promenade was so delightfully interrupted) and noticed an animal transport truck and police car at the entrance to the fenced off area. The scene was calm, the police not even visible, so I surmised the herd had been brought in to ingest the debris strewn hay and grasses that accumulates around said on ramp to reduce the possibility of it igniting during our ever expanding fire season- certainly can't mow something that steep and irregular, and a prescribed burn... don't think so.

*Yes, a real place, not a cartoon! It's a lovely little 'park' nestled amidst the surrounding industrial gridlock that had a real forgotten by time, Victorian feel to it- unfortunately, it was modernized of late and a cement sidewalk was routed through the middle of it! Still nice, but...