Another Mountain Goat
I’m going a bit off-topic now I’m afraid. Well only a bit – this is a ‘Mountain Life’ post. It’s not my fault, I can’t concentrate as all the dogs are inside playing. Never a good arrangement. But they can’t stay out as they found another mountain goat this morning. Just up our track the dogs went bonkers. Off I toddled to see what was occuring. The youngest dog (eight months) was very pleased with herself, squealing and barking in a very high pitched, brain-piercing tone.
I was looking at the floor as the route was rocky and I had non-practical cloggy type shoes on, not expecting to do any mountaineering at that time of the morning! Suddenly I looked up and there was a rather large, old mountain goat, known here as a cabra. They really are more like deer or antelope than goats but that’s what they’re called. It was stood on a large rock, backed up against a cliff-face showing the dogs its horns to no affect. It worked on me though – it looked very ominous, looming at us all!
So today is a ‘keep the dogs in’ day, to give the goat a chance to disappear. The problem is the old goats sometimes come down from the mountain to hang out and recover in the shelter of numerous abandoned ruins. Apparantly they do this if they’ve had a particularly nasty fight with another male, so are often a bit stunned and shaken. Not surprising when you hear them butting horns together, very loud and very dangerous. The last one hung around for nearly a week. I hope this one goes back up the mountain a bit quicker than that! The cabras are protected – you now have to pay if you want to shoot one, which is definitely working at increasing their number. Each year we see more and more of the giant beasts. The horns are incredible – each ring indicates a year of age. I think this morning’s specimen must be about eleven which is pretty good going.
They’re beautiful creatures but I don’t really want the dogs to bring one back to the house! Don’t worry folks the dogs are all barkers rather than hunters but still they are dogs so its always best to be careful.
As I didn’t have the camera with me this morning you’ll have to make do with a photo of the last cabra that visited around Christmas.
Yes I did shelter on the opposite side of the fence to the goat, to take the picture. Those horns are scarey!
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They are amazing animals aren’t they!
I didn’t know they were protected. It rather surprised me but in a nice way.
Hope he finds is way back up the mountain and you can let your dogs out. Stir crazy dogs are not fun.
In our natural park they sell licenses to shoot a certain number each year – heavy penalties if you shoot without the license. Last year we had Italians who bought licenses and came for a days shooting. The Agents Rural were very peeved when the Italians came back the next day to try again with no license quota left. They were escorted from the mountain!
Rumour has it that the licenses are several thousand euros! Glad the numbers are increasing but boy did the dogs drive us crazy yesterday!
You must be on a very big mountain if there’s enough wild area for goats. We won’t see any round here, too many tractors passing etc. as we are on the ridge at the top of a small mountain. I wonder if we can see your mountain from here.
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Montsagre is in the way – we’re sort of on the south of it, so you can’t see us! We’re in Els Ports which is a well protected Natural Park now. Lots of wildlife which is cool.
Do you get wild cats? They’re very big, like Scottish wild cats I think. Our moggy gets in lots of scrapes with them guarding the finca they’re double the size of him but he still chases them up trees!
Great picture! We have Bighorns in the mountains near here, but you hardly ever see them. Unfortunately they’re currently being decimated by an unknown virus. Sad …
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That’s a shame.
We saw a lot more of the goats during a dogless fortnight a few years ago. They got cheeky enough to try eating the olive trees next to our house! Understandably the local farmers aren’t too impressed.
We’re alright though – 3 dogs encourages them to keep away from our veggies thank goodness!
No, no wild cats here, at least we haven’t seen any, just wild boar, rabbits, snakes, toads, mice and the odd rat. Oh, and we once found a beautiful owl drowned in a half-full blue barrel. He must have perched on the edge in the night and fallen in, poor thing.
How marvelous that you get these visitations, but, yes, of course, you do need to keep the wildlife out of your garden. We have bighorn sheep in the area (this is a healthy herd, or at least I haven’t seen anything about a virus in this area), but have never had them on our property. Elk, deer, mountain lion et cetera, yes, but the sheep stay just a little higher up in the Rockies. We do get to see them frequently when we go hiking, just not here on the farm.
I feel quite humbled Esmaa – deer, elk, mountain lion? Gosh our dogs really would go mental with that lot! A large wild goat a month is enough ‘big game’ for me!
Jan – such a shame about the owl, they’re so impressive when not drowned too! We do get giant frogs or toads (not very good at telling which is which) the size of dinner plates! They like to wallow in amongst the beets in summer for a nice bit of daytime shade – lovely but they have made me jump a few times when watering.
Last summer I got up one day and went outside and there was a huge toad swimming in the pool, holding onto the back of the lilo! I wish I’d had the camera handy.
Jan, that’s such a fab and daft image I don’t whether to believe you or not!
Great post! I always enjoy reading your stories! Thumbs up!
Hi there we have just bought a small finca just outside of Aldover at les Olles and I spotted a horned antelope type beast the other day I thought it was an Ibex but maybe this was a goat too, it was only a youngster with short horns(antlers) I did get a photo but how do I send this to you, can I attach it to a message to your email.I would love to know what it was. Also we have two snakes in our cisterna I have photos I think one is a grass snake but not shore about the other I think it could be a slender smooth snake very pretty with very sharp diamond markings small head with quite large eyes. Looking forward to bottling some of our olives this autumn now I have read your recipes.
Hi Stevie – You’re just around the corner! Feel free to email thegardener@catalangarden.com. We’ve had lots of young goats around lately too, they make a rather squeaky bird-like noise which confuses the dogs no end!
The Iberia Nature forum (on my links page) are really good for finding out what things are too.
Have to admit I’m rubbish with snake identification but there are a few vipers with diamond markings so maybe that’s what you’ve found. We sometimes see them fighting each other.