twitter

SodBlog

The Goat Man Rises

Written by: Erik Hagen

All of my blog posts lately have been related to Batman. Have you noticed that? That all I seem to write about lately is Batman? It’s almost like all I can think about is Batman, from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep again later that night, at which point I begin to dream about Batman and how I wish that he was me. My apologies for that. It’s just that there is a lot of Batman in the news lately. Also, I happen to like Batman, almost to a point that is unhealthy. Still, I’m sorry for writing so much about the Batman and I will stop doing it henceforth.

Instead, I will write about the goat man.

Wait, stop, you are saying. There’s a goat man now? Where? Can we pet him? Will he eat a tin can out of our hands? Yes, there certainly is a goat man, and no, I would not try feeding him anything. But even better, the goat man is REAL. He exists, I tell you. It’s still real to me, dammit. We have photographic evidence of him and everything. You can see for yourself.

Is he a man, or is he a goat?

I won’t keep the details from you for a single second longer, because I know how excited you are to hear about this. So there was a guy named Corey Creighton who was hiking last Sunday along Ben Lomond Peak in the mountain range about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. Like any other hiker worth his gumption, he was minding his own business, walking and doing his able best not to trip on anything. Typical hiker stuff. Then, out of nowhere, he spots a herd of goats. Almost all of them real goats, except for one. One of the goats was trailing behind the other goats, and something was a bit off about this goat. The hiker couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I thought maybe it was injured,” Creighton said. “It just looked odd.” Corey Creighton is a master of understatement.

So Creighton took out his binoculars to have a look at this odd goat, and what does he discover? That the oddness of this particular goat lay in the fact that he was actually a man wearing a goat suit. Yessir, a homemade goat suit, with fake horns and a mask with eyeholes and everything. A goat man, if you will, who had seemingly been adopted into the goat community, likely through an equal blend of innate cunning and several handfuls of popcorn seeds. As you would guess, Creighton was a little weirded out by the whole thing.

“We were the only ones around for miles,” Creighton said. “It was real creepy.” Again, understatement is this man’s greatest gift.

So why, you ask? Is this for real? Why would any man want to become a goat? A good question, given how awful we all agree that goats are. But the mystery is key to this tale. Who isn’t intrigued by the strange tale of this man, this goat man, who is simultaneously both man and goat? When will he be getting his sitcom on FX? Important questions, to be certain. But more puzzling, to experts, is what effect this goat man will have on the local environment.

“People do some pretty out there things in the name of enjoying wildlife. But I’ve never had a report like this,” Phil Douglass of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said. “There’s a saying we have among biologists — You don’t go far enough, you don’t get the data. You go too far, you don’t go home. The same is true with some wildlife enthusiasts. [...] This person puts on a goat suit, he changes the game. But as long as he accepts responsibility, it’s not illegal.”

You hear that, goat man? You’ve changed things, forever. There’s no going back. See, to them, you’re nothing but a freak. Like me!

The goat man, however, was apparently not all that pleased with the newfound attention his dressing up in a goat suit and going to live amongst the goats somehow managed to attract. Or so it seems, based upon a mysterious call wildlife officials received from an “agitated man” after the sighting was reported in local media. The unidentified caller simply stated, “Leave goat man alone. He’s done nothing wrong.” Which is true. Leave the goat man alone, people! There is nothing wrong with a man successfully having become a goat. It is, in fact, the most beautiful thing most of you will ever witness. You’re crying right now, aren’t you?

But “leave goat man alone” was the one thing we couldn’t do, and I regret to inform you that the mystery of the goat man has now been solved. The goat man, it turns out, was nothing more than a hunter preparing for goat hunting season by, quite logically, assembling a makeshift goat costume and then getting himself adopted by a local herd of goats. Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense, because that is how everyone hunts, right? I’ve never hunted, so I have no idea. But it would seem to make sense, and would go a long way towards explaining away the mystery of my grandfather’s elk costume, which has haunted me since my boyhood.

So now you know the haunting tale of the goat man, who it turns out was never really a goat but rather a man trying to kill goats by disguising himself as one and then hoping no one else would, in turn, shoot him. After all this, what do we truly know about the goat man? That he’s the hero America deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A man in a goat suit.

Bismarck resident Erik Hagen is the author of the SodBlog and swears this is his last Dark Knight-related blog until at least next week. He can be reached via goat signal at or visit his website at sodblog.com.

This entry was posted in SodBlog and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Comment on this

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Copyright © 2012 Great Plains Examiner All rights reserved.
209 Aspen Ave., Bismarck, North Dakota 58503, (701) 645-1270