188 
ALMOST HUMAN 
THE ANGORA GOAT 
The goat is not a law-abiding citizen. He has a genius for trespass- 
ing upon other people’s property. The only thing his owner can be 
sure of is that he will be found where he has no business to be. In 
days of old it was one of the commonest of sights in some Melbourne 
suburbs to see a string of goats walking down the streets, leaning 
against every gate they passed in the hope of finding one that had been 
left unlatched. As soon as such an one was found there was woe for 
the amateur gardener who took care of the front garden plot. One 
gentleman, who was a consistent prize-winner at the annual chrysanthe- 
mum shows, found one morning about a week before one of these fixtures 
that his back gate had been left unlatched, either by accident or through 
malice, and there were not even the stalks left where the night before 
was a radiant mass of bloom. Such acts as these led to no end of 
trouble for the domestic goat. One suburb was practically a large goat 
farm, for every cottager owned her own goat, and in those days it was 
continual sport for people to go to the local “pound” any morning and 
listen to a half-dozen highly indignant old women telling the pound- 
keeper what they thought of him for his cruelty in arresting their milk- 
supply. At last the nuisance became so great that all the metropolitan 
councils withdrew the freedom of the city from them, and goats were 
banished to outlying regions. 
TRESPASSEES WILL BE PROSECUTED. 
There was a half-bred Angora goat at the gardens once that was 
cured by an astute camel of his propensity for poking his nose where he 
was not wanted. He had been next-door neighbor to this camel for 
some time, and was always trying to get into his compound. One day 
he succeeded, and as soon as the camel saw him coming up his preserves,, 
he loped down to enquire what the goat wanted. Somehow the camel 
seemed ten times as big, so close at hand, as he had done between the 
dividing fence, and Master Billy got suddenly panic-stricken. He bolted 
for the fence to get out again, but in his blind terror he failed to find the 
hole he had got through, and butted about for awhile furiously. The 
camel thought this was being done for his amusement, evidently, for 
he at once began bucking like a young horse. One of the most laugh- 
