Abused Goat Kills Owner
Maggie Bob
watchdog, whether Snowball wanted to be one or not. To that end, 77-year-old
Hulsey, a retired poultry worker from Canton, Georgia, took to beating
Snowball with a stick to make him more aggressive. "Pa, this goat's going to
kill you if you keep that up," Alma Hulsey warned her husband. She was
right.
On 16 May 1991, Hulsey once again approached the goat, brandishing a stick.
This time Snowball landed the first blow. The 110-pound goat attacked his
tormentor, butting Hulsey in the stomach, twice knocking him down. Hulsey
scrambled onto the porch in an effort to get away. The goat bounded up the
steps after him. While Alma Hulsey watched, Snowball rammed his master over
the edge. Hulsey fell to the ground five feet below and died where he
landed. "Blunt trauma to the abdominal cavity," said the coroner. Snowball
had ruptured Hulsey's stomach.
As a dangerous animal who might harm another, by rights Snowball should have
been put down. Once the goat's story was known, however, the officials who
were to decide Snowball's fate were inundated with pleas to spare the
creature. More than 500 protesters from around the nation called Cherokee
County animal control after it was announced Snowball might be put to death.
Many offered to adopt Snowball.
Some even made death threats. "What happens to the goat happens to you," one
caller reportedly warned. There was also talk of a bomb being planted if the
goat didn't walk.
Snowball got his reprieve. He was turned over to Noah's Ark, a private
animal shelter for neglected and abused animals in Locust Grove, a little
town south of Atlanta. Four hours after his arrival, he was laid on a
kitchen table and neutered, an operation intended to make him less
aggressive. He was also rechristened "Snow".
Why this furor over a goat and the seeming lack of concern for the man whose
life it had ended? In the small community Hulsey had been part of, he was
well and truly mourned. Yet outside that pocket of acquaintance, sentiment
ran the other way -- many animal lovers saw a certain divine justice in his
fate. He'd brought harm to an animal, and the animal had struck back.
Maggie Bob, Ram-a-lamba-lamba
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