Why I Love Seattle (or) Who Let the Goats Out?

Yesterday afternoon, while driving near my home in downtown Seattle, we passed a hilly patch of grass on the side of the road that slanted downward beneath the overpass onto the freeway. On a normal day it's a particularly unspectacular parcel of land, and one that we pass not infrequently, but yesterday it took on new personality with the presence of a group of squatters.

Namely, a herd of goats.

A herd of goats, and a sign that said "Goats for Rent."

I find this curious for two reasons. The first - and I should think the more obvious - is that someone must have gone to a bizarrely large amount of trouble to get an entire herd of goats under an overpass, onto a patch of land which has no gate, in the middle of downtown Seattle. The second is that, no matter how hard I rack my brain, I simply cannot conceive of a reason that any Emerald-city condo-dweller would have for needing to rent a goat. Stranger still is the idea that said condo-dweller, having found himself in need of a stubborn and hairy four-legged lawnmower, would think to look for said creature under the freeway. Did someone really think of this as a viable business enterprise?