Wednesday, July 06, 2005

A Beast the Color of Winter



"When the goat had finally gone as far as it could, there was not enough room to turn around. So, Chadwick writes, 'after some tenative foot shuffling the mountaineer braced its front hooves on the ledge and slowly raised the rear of its body off the ground. Clenching my hands tighter and tighter on the binoculars, I watched the beast lift its hindquarters higher and higher and begin to roll them straight over its head. The rear hooves touched the wall here and there for an instant, yet what the creature had effectively carried off by the time it was finished was a complete slow-motion cartwheel, or technically, what gymnasts call a rollover. I put down my binoculars and remembered to breathe, and this mountain goat, an averaged-sized billy, strolled off in the direction from which it had come."


David Rockwell, "Exploring Glacier National Park"

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Nice pic. The sight of a goat performing a rollover is something that has managed to elude me thus far - but it's a great mental image.

3:06 PM  
Blogger DeEldor said...

I agree, Scott. I wonder who taught this goat how to do his rock ledge rollover in the first place? It's astounding when you think about it.

D.

3:54 PM  

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