ODDLY ENOUGH

September 3, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

ODDLY ENOUGH

Goats rescued after 2 days on 6-inch ledge in Montana

HELENA, Mont.

Two young goats wandered onto the thin ledge of a railroad bridge and spent nearly two days high above the ground until rescuers in a towering cherry picker plucked them from their perch, hungry but safe.

The rescue occurred Wednesday 60 feet above a little-trafficked rural road in southern Montana between Billings and Roundup, after a caller told the Rimrock Humane Society the goats were stranded on the 6-inch ledge.

The young female animals weighing 25 and 35 pounds mostly stayed on the angled ledge, even though there was a wider surface area on a pillar just a few feet away.

Sandy Church, humane society president, said it wasn’t clear how the nimble-footed animals got into the predicament, but she speculated they wandered onto the ledge at night then froze after the sun rose and they discovered where they were.

The goats sometimes stepped to the pillar to urinate then returned to the narrower ledge, where they tried to rest their tired legs by tucking them under their bodies for a few seconds, she said.

Rescuers enlisted the help of officials at Signal Peak Energy, which operates a nearby coal mine. Mine boss John DeMichiei volunteered mining equipment with an arm high enough to reach the stranded goats that eventually moved to the pillar.

“We thought they were going to panic, but it was just the opposite,” said Church, who videotaped the five-minute rescue.

The rescue went smoothly, and the goats appeared to be in good condition at an animal sanctuary.

The goats had collars around their necks, and rescuers were searching for the owner. Church hoped the animals weren’t abandoned. But if they were, she already has talked to people offering to adopt them.

“Everybody loves an animal with a story,” Church said.

Powder turns out to be Grandma’s ashes, not drugs

FARSON, Wyo.

The powdery substance that Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers found in a zip-close bag during a recent traffic stop turned out not to be drugs after all.

Sgt. Stephen Townsend of the patrol says then when troopers pulled over two men in a car Wednesday, they found small amounts of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and thought the bag might hold illegal drugs. Troopers contacted the car’s owner — the girlfriend of one of the men — and asked her.

The woman told troopers the plastic bag held her grandmother’s cremated ashes. She said they had been very close, and she always keeps the ashes in her car.

Townsend said troopers put the ashes back.

Associated Press