Police officers in Oklahoma responding to what they thought was a man crying for help got a surprise on reaching the scene: the anguished cries they heard on a farm near Enid were actually those of a goat.
In bodycam footage released by the Enid police department, officer David Sneed told his colleague, Neal Storey: “That’s a person.”
Sneed and Storey ran toward what appeared to be a voice crying for help. Then they realized their error.
“That’s a goat,” Storey said.
“That’s a goat?” Sneed replied.
The officers approached the farm owner. He told them the goat had been separated from a friend and was very upset.
“I’m sitting here, and I keep thinking I hear someone yell, ‘Help!’” Storey said, the goat continuing to cry in the background.
“I’m sitting out here in our back yard, and I hear it, but I don’t know if it’s an animal or a person,” Sneed said, laughing. “But sure enough we were walking over here, and I’m like, ‘That’s a person!’”
Coincidentally, the footage landed online as the internet celebrated the 10th anniversary of a period when goats yelling like humans went viral.
In 2013, videos including “Funny Goats Screaming Like Humans”, “Taylor Swift – Trouble (Goat Remix)” and “Living On a Prayer (Goat Edition)” racked up millions of views.
For goats, “yelling” is a common way of communicating distress, ranging from wanting to be fed to young goats calling for their mothers.
“In my experience with goats, it does not take much for them to scream bloody murder, as if you are torturing them, when simply handling them,” Jean-Marie Luginbuhl, an animal scientist at North Carolina State University, told Slate in 2013.
In 2013, another pair of cops mistook goat cries for human screams. According to Yahoo, someone in Putnam county, Tennessee, called 911, reporting hearing cries for help which the dispatcher could hear through the phone.
When the officers arrived, they found a goat tied to a fence. The episode was detailed in an incident report.
Ten years later, on Facebook, the Enid police department said it appreciated its officers’ diligent response.
“Thank you, gentlemen. Your swift actions (although in the end not necessary) are appreciated by us all,” the department said.
“All in all, you really can’t say it was that baaad of a call.”
