Once upon a field trip, the goats chose violence.
Filed under: Goat Wisdom // Origins of Chaos
I was four or five – small enough that petting zoos felt magical, and big enough to feed the animals without help.
We’d barely stepped into the enclosure when the goats spotted me.
I don’t know if it was my floral skort, the smell of my sunscreen, or just cosmic bad luck – but they swarmed.
Not a curious nuzzle.
Not a polite sniff.
A full-on, frenzied, fabric-consuming mob.
The Great Goat Incident of Early Childhood
Within seconds, I was buried in a living, bleating avalanche.
Tiny hooves. Ears everywhere. Adults yelling things like “Oh my god – get her!”
The teachers tried to intervene. The zoo staff rushed in. It was chaos.
By the time they pulled me out, my outfit was… mostly theoretical.
The goats had eaten most of my clothes.
The zoo, horrified, gave me an oversized T-shirt so I could at least ride home with dignity (and coverage).
And that was that.
At four years old, I learned two very specific lessons:
- Never underestimate goats.
- Skorts are not to be trusted.
At the Time, It Was Traumatic.
I was shaken, half-dressed, and emotionally ruined.
For years, I was scared of goats – and, somewhat unfairly, of petting zoos in general.
But as the years passed, it became a story my family told at holiday tables:
the day the goats ate Mel’s clothes.
And now, looking back, it’s funny.
Not just because it was absurd – but because it’s so perfectly life.
What the Goats Taught Me
It took me a long time to see it, but that ridiculous moment ended up shaping a lot of how I move through the world.
Because chaos, it turns out, doesn’t always mean catastrophe.
Sometimes it’s just a mess that becomes a memory – the kind of story that makes people laugh until they cry decades later.
And those goats? They were just doing what goats do:
hungry, determined, and totally unbothered by anyone’s expectations.
Resilience and determination can take you a long way; even if it’s through cotton!
Why They Still Matter
When I created Loaf & Lore, I didn’t plan to make goats my mascot.
But it felt right – maybe because I’ve been on the wrong end of their ambition before.
Goats climb.
They persevere.
They go for what they want, even when it looks ridiculous from the outside.
They remind me that sometimes the moments that feel humiliating or impossible at the time end up being the ones that teach us grit, humor, and grace.
So yes – the goats ate my clothes.
But they also gave me perspective.
And if that’s not a good metaphor for adulthood, I don’t know what is.
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