Goats Invade Silicon Valley

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

So Google is getting in on the whole “going green” thing by foregoing the “noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air” in favor of renting a bunch of goats to chew on the lawn at the company headquarters in Mountain View. Two hundred of them hang out for a week with a border collie, munching the Google grass (which I’m sure is delicious), before being shipped to somewhere else. Somewhere like Yahoo?

Because after Google’s (perhaps slightly smug) announcement, Yahoo popped up and said, “Don’t get all high and mighty about those goats, Google, because we totally beat you to the punch.” Apparently they’ve been using goats-as-lawnmowers for years.

On a side note, does anyone else find that “Yahoo” twittering to “Google” kind of anthropomorphizes them in a slightly creepy way? However, one thing that is not slightly creepy are these goats, which are indeed much cuter than lawnmowers.

However, I submit that it wasn’t search engines that herded the goats into Silicon Valley, but rather Livejournal, where Frank the Goat has been doing their yardwork since 1999.

Of course, The Washington Post wonders how much fuel it takes to ship goats around – less than the lawnmowers, one would hope? Though in any case, with Google taking up the cause, I can’t help but wonder what might be next: iGoat?