GOATICIDE

By Bob Walsh

Regular readers will remember some time ago I wrote about Cedar the goat.  Cedar was as 4H project.  At the last minute the young girl who owned him decide she did not want him turned into shishkabob and the girl's parents kidnapped the 4-month old goat from the county fair before it could be auctioned.  The Shasta County fair manager cried FOUL and the sheriff's office went out to seize the goat.  It had in the mean time been moved by the girl's parents to a sanctuary in Sonoma County.  Didn't work, the S. O. found it.  I guess Sanctuary works for criminal illegal aliens but not for pet goats.

There is now a federal civil rights suit filed on the matter and it seems that nobody knows, or is willing to say, what happened to the goat.  They believe it was slaughtered for meat on July 28, 2022 but nobody will say where the meat went.  There are nasty letters and even death threats floating around over the matter.  The Bowman Meat Company in Cottonwood has been subpoenaed THREE TIMES in the matter, each time denying they slaughtered it.  There is speculation that a Redding real estate firm may have ended up with the meat, something they flatly deny.  

Civil suits are flying back and forth.  Some, filed by the state, have been dismissed.  A petition seeking "Justice for Cedar" got 80,000 signatures, another similar petition got 43,000.  

In the end a representative of State Senator Brian Dahle paid $902 for the goat.  The parents offered to buy the goat back.  The State Dept of Agriculture, which runs the sales, said NO WAY.  

So, there it sits.  Nobody is saying what precisely happened to Cedar.  It is generally believed that Cedar was slaughtered for meat but nobody will say where the meat went or who authorized the slaughter. 

On the story goes, including 8 pages in today's electronic version of the Sacramento BEE, where I got this story.  That is more "ink" that most murders get.