Es Un Chivito Lindo

Sometimes you get gators, sometimes you get goats.

I had a scheduled tour today, which means up at 6 am and out of the house before the sun comes up. Bright-eyed and bushy bearded - I ambled off to work, eager to get back to the Everglades. MaLe and I had explored in the Picayune State Forest of the Everglades on Saturday, but I had not led a tour in 2 weeks which may be why I've been crabby.

So I picked up the tour van and headed out to find my travelers. It was a beautiful morning. Sunny. 70 degrees and breezy. A great day for gators and a great day to be in the 'glades. But my travelers never showed. Dejected, I drove back to drop the van off with the boss and headed back home.

On my way home from work at 7:50 am, I passed by a place that is affectionately known as the "Million Dollar Goat Farm". There is a CVS pharmacy to the west of the goat farm and a Walgreens Pharmacy to the east. (This is the standard for every other intersection in Florida. Can't have one without the other.) A Burger King is across the street and an apartment complex towers above the goat farm to the north. Developers have just about succeeded in building on or paving over everything here in Fort Myers and Lee County and yet here remains, on what is no doubt a very pricey piece of land, a huge goat farm. And today the goats were out in force.

Now I'm not suggesting that goats are anything special. Rumor has it they are destructive little...monsters, but seeing hundreds of goats where a developer has no doubt considered placing a 7-11, Juicy Lucy's or a drive-thru ophthalmologist kind of lifted my spirits. Someone owns that property. Someone has held off the developers and someone has left hundreds of cute goats to roam about and leave an otherwise unsightly landscape somewhat wild. And for the record, goats ain't native to Florida. They're just damn cute.