Detroit should approve of Brightmoor goats

Detroit certainly has its problems, blight being perhaps the least of them. Still, it is a problem, and one has to wonder what innovative solutions might be out there to help obliterate it.

Urban farming is often discussed, and it appears reasonable enough. What harm can there be in growing crops useful to man and beast in areas where things must less useful are cultivating the land through nature?

An obvious variation on such farming would be raising and using harmless animals on the blighted land. This is precisely what a company called Idyll Farms Detroit has just begun doing: on an unoccupied block of land in the city's Brightmoor district, the company put 18 young goats. They were to feed on the extant weeds and, coincidentally, clear the immediate area of an eyesore. Needless to say, Detroit officials are giving the goats the boot. City ordinances prohibit keeping 'wild animals' within the city limits.

Goats are wild animals? Apparently they are to the city of Detroit. Who knew, after all these years, that we had been endangering our kids when we took them to state fairs and petting zoos?

This is another example of how governments get things wrong and then proceed to become hardheaded when challenged about it. There isn't any imaginable harm a bunch of young goats properly tended can do to anyone. But the ordinance is there and it's going cost the Idyll farms five hundred bucks per goat if they aren't gone by noon this Monday.

All we can say is, baaaaa humbug to Detroit officials.