If you pay a visit to downtown Los Angeles in the near future, you might expect to see the usual assortment of tall buildings and expensive retail shops. But what about farm animals? No, there isn’t going to be a new zoo located in city’s main commercial center. And there are no movies being filmed that are set in a post-apocalyptic world where wildlife runs free through urban areas . City officials have merely hired a herd of goats to clear shrubs on a plot of land where a new skyscraper is slated to be built.
Apparently goats are cheaper than people when it comes to clearing growth from an area. No wages, no gas-powered weed whackers, no overtime pay, no unions…what’s not to like? The goats have even become a bit of an attraction, with locals stopping by to look and snap photos. It should take about a week for the animals to eat their way through the lot’s undergrowth. I wonder if they’ll have to hire people to clean up all the goat poop before the construction crews move in. See a BBC report about the goats here.