I thought I had written this story but I guess not!

There seems to be something about me and goats. During ASP05, I had the pleasure of having my head split open by a goat bone. So during ASP06, in some subtle way, I guess you could say that I had my revenge?

Varina and I were running a gridding team up at a prehistoric site on someone’s property. The site itself was on an upthrust of rock of which the surrounding softer rock had eroded away, leaving a high jut of rock and a lower plateau around it. It was a little challenging to lay our grid out since the ground varied so much! But we managed.

The morning was pretty uneventful. We set out the grid, and then started to collect. There were two goats tethered on the site. One was a bit jumpy, but the other one seemed quite placid. We just made sure not to move too quickly near it, and it seemed quite content to meander over to the far extent of its rope when we were in the area. To sketch things in, the owner of the property had a house just down the road, and there was a dog house, with a big barky dog. To get to the site you had to walk along the road, past the dog and along the house. We were set up right by an abandoned house, probably the original one to the site.

It is important to note at this point that James was occupied squiring Rhianne and another new grad student around the island, and Andy was on Kythera getting much needed supplies. At around 10:30 or so, James came by with Rhianne and Suzie, to show them the site. At this point, Varina and I decided to go up with James to see the site that we would be gridding in the afternoon. So we called break and left our gridlings to snack and relax a little.

At the second site, which wasn’t very far away, we snuffled around a little and got the lay of the land. James left with Rhianne and Suzie, and Varina and I went cross-country back to the site. On our way, we noticed a goat lying in some bushes, chewing its cud or whatever the heck they do. I remarked that it looked an awful lot like the one goat which was by the prehistoric site, as they both had apricot coloured fur.

We got back to the site, and finished clearing the site. Then we decided to put in another row of squares along the eastern side of our grid. At this point, we were getting quite close to the other goat, which wasn’t as docile as the other one. The second goat had grey silky fur, and it would run to the end of its rope, flinging itself and thrashing around. We were clearly at a quandry. Our permit granted us access to any part of the island, but this goat was in danger of hurting itself.

Around this time, we noticed that someone was shouting at us. “Y0u must LEAVE NOW!”. Uh-oh. English means he was talking to us! In fact, we had heard shouting for a while, but the man’s dog had been barking at us for a while so we had just assumed he was shouting at his dog.

Varina, Oli and I decided to go over to talk with the landowner and explain what we were doing. He was familiar, we had seen him at the taverna most nights, and he would say hello to us as we passed. He was absolutely apoplectic at that moment, however. He snatched up a rope and harness and brandished it in our faces.

“I lose 5 goats! You are always coming on my land and disturbing my goats! What am I supposed to do? You hurt the goats! I live here my whole life and you archaeologists come in and disturb everything! All day you are here, every day you walk by and hurt my goats!”

He continued along this vein for quite a while. Oh boy. He was so angry he then just started yelling at us in Greek. Unfortunately none of us spoke Greek all that well.

Varina and Ollie tried to reason with him, to explain about our permits and what we were doing there. At this point, another man came up and he had a shotgun, and another man stood up from where he had been lounging against the wall of the house. Everyone looked angry.

The landowner was so mad, and coupled with the company that had arrived, not to mention the gun, I decided we should just cut and run. We apologised and ran back to the site. All of us were shaking with adrenaline. Varina was bright red, and her eyes were sparking. Oli’s temper was up as well. All I could think about was how we could get off the site without upsetting anyone else into a precipitous action.

“Pack it up, kids!” “Move it! We are out of here!”

Oli loaded up the crate of finds and cords and left on his motorcycle to find James. Varina and I then shepherded the gridlings to the site we had scouted out. They walked so slowly! Varina and I were power-walking and just wanted to get past the house and past the doghouse and just away from the situation!

The above is the only photo I have from that day. This was the second site, and if you look to the right of the photo, you can see the landowner’s house from the first site.

When we got to the second site, everyone was a bit shaken. So we sat down, had lunch, and then gridded that site. When we got back to the hotel, we found out that the first goat had escaped (that was the one we had seen on our way back) and the second goat had died. The thrashing around in panic ruptured its spleen and it died. Both of them were fine milking goats, not like the wild ones. Both were pets. And we had caused one to escape and the other to die. Compounding the problem, we owed the landowner money because he had given us well-needed supplies, and he was the brother of the president of the island! Oh boy.

That night, almost none of the locals went to the taverna. I am sure the news spread at the speed of cellular signal. The ones that were there were very quiet and just watched us intently. Varina and I could barely stand to sit there, we felt so bad. Our crew weren’t very sympathetic. At well-timed moments, a whisper of “Goat-killlllerrrrrr” would rasp into our ears.

As aftermath, James and Andy went to meet with the landowner, and made reparation. The first few nights after were awful, but after a couple days, things limped back into a semblance of normality. We could exchange “Ya sas” and things were ok. I think the landowner after a while found it to be a very little bit amusing — he made the observation that none of us must be familiar with animals or farms! How true! It was still quite horrible though while we were living it – we upset the whole island!

In case you are interested, we concocted a drink to memorialise the occasion:

The Goatkiller

1 part ouzo
1 part Jim Beam
However much Coke is left in the can after you make another drink.