The Goats of Berkeley
Berkeley is such a silly place for the most part. And so much of the silliness is either offensive or witless or simply puzzling. But sometimes it can also be charming.
This morning was a pretty normal morning at the lab. I was dividing my time between the experiment I have running on the synchrotron, working on the SOI etching process, and laying out my next sensor chip. By lunch time I was ready to venture outside. So I walked out of the facility and the hills surrounding the lab were covered with goats.
The town has decided that the best way to prevent fires in the hills is to keep the dry grass short. The best and most natural way to keep the grass short is the way nature intended: to have it eaten by goats. So the town hires goat-herders to take their flocks around the Berkeley Hills cropping the grass. The flocks contain 200-300 goats, and when a flock is on a hill, it's quite a sight for a city kid like me.
No matter how many times I see the goats (dozens), I always get a thrill when I come outside and, unexpectedly, there they are. I especially enjoy it when I've been dressed in a bunny suit fiddling with chemicals in a clean room, or been behind the radiation wall at the synchrotron. I like the juxtiposition of watching a goat herd munch on the hills of one of the most advanced research labs on Earth.
It's funny how little I interface with animals. I wonder how many humans in history have lived a long and full life and never seen or been around an animal?
This morning was a pretty normal morning at the lab. I was dividing my time between the experiment I have running on the synchrotron, working on the SOI etching process, and laying out my next sensor chip. By lunch time I was ready to venture outside. So I walked out of the facility and the hills surrounding the lab were covered with goats.
The town has decided that the best way to prevent fires in the hills is to keep the dry grass short. The best and most natural way to keep the grass short is the way nature intended: to have it eaten by goats. So the town hires goat-herders to take their flocks around the Berkeley Hills cropping the grass. The flocks contain 200-300 goats, and when a flock is on a hill, it's quite a sight for a city kid like me.
No matter how many times I see the goats (dozens), I always get a thrill when I come outside and, unexpectedly, there they are. I especially enjoy it when I've been dressed in a bunny suit fiddling with chemicals in a clean room, or been behind the radiation wall at the synchrotron. I like the juxtiposition of watching a goat herd munch on the hills of one of the most advanced research labs on Earth.
It's funny how little I interface with animals. I wonder how many humans in history have lived a long and full life and never seen or been around an animal?