To protect and serve? Really?

A familiar trope of the family dramas of my childhood was the boy having to "man up" and shoot the rabid family dog. I guess it was supposed to teach us - including us city slickers who lacked both guns and rabid dogs - that life was tough, that life was unfair. And that at some point in our lives, we (especially the boys) all might be called on to do something shattering, something emotionally devastating, for the greater good. 

Old Yeller, anyone?

Fast forward all those decades, and we get the sad story of a nine-year-old little girl in California who raised a goat as part of a 4H project for the Shasta District Fair. As part of the program, families purchase goats (kids?) for their kids, and the kids (humans) learn about how to take care of animals - and what farmers and ranchers do. Which is raise animals for slaughter. Part of the deal is that the animals are auctioned off and transitioned from pet to food. 

But Jessica Long's daughter became so attached to her goat, Cedar, and so distraught at the thought of Cedar being killed, that Long decided to go ahead and violate the rules. 

She what-the-helled it, and kidnapped Cedar from the fairground barn. Cedar had already been auctioned, so Long offered to repay whatever the lost revenue would be. 

Of course: Rules are rules. Long's family knew what they were signed up for. And all of us meat eaters have to live with the fact that there are actually living, breathing, and - let's face it - at least somewhat sentient creatures that have to lose their lives so we can enjoy a BLT or some chicken nuggets. Or whatever it is that's made with goat. 

And it's not like I'm a big fan of coddling children, and wrapping them from the facts of life. (I went to my first funeral at the age of 8; I went to my first wake unaccompanied by a parent at the age of 11.) Kids are resilient. Kids are aware. Kids are tough. 

But, but, but...This is a little girl. A very little girl who had lost three of her grandparents in the past year, and who found solace through raising Cedar. 

The Shasta District Fair wasn't having any:

“Making an exception for you will only teach [our] youth that they do not have to abide by the rules,” [Shasta District Fair Chief Executive Melanie] Silva wrote back to Long in an email reviewed by The Times dated June 28, 2022. “Also, in this era of social media this has been a negative experience for the fairgrounds as this has been all over Facebook and Instagram.” (Source: LA Times)

So instead of attempting to find a resolution that was kind and compassionate, or at least give the Long family more time to adjust, the Shasta District Fair, after tsk-tsking Jessica Long, called in the sheriff's office. Armed with a search warrant, detectives put out some sort of caprine APB and drove over 500 miles around Northern California in their goat hunt for Cedar. (The Long family had found a home for Cedar on a farm. They live in a residential area and could not keep the goat with them.)

Echoing language used when law enforcement search a home for drugs, the warrant allowed deputies to “utilize breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers” and to search all rooms, garages and “storage rooms, and outbuildings of any kind large enough to accommodate a small goat.”

Oh, FFS. Or as a lawyer involved with animal rights had it:

“It’s shocking,” said Ryan Gordon, an attorney with Advancing Law for Animals. “It’s a little girl’s goat, not Pablo Escobar.”

This situation is coming to light now because Jessica Long is suing Shasta District Fair officials and the county:

... arguing it committed an “egregious waste of police resources” and violated her and her daughter’s 4th Amendment and 14th Amendment rights protecting them from unreasonable searches and seizures, and due process. Long and her attorneys allege the dispute was a civil matter she was willing to resolve.

But the Shasta officials were hard-assing it from the outset, telling Long from Day One that they were going to call the cops on her. (Remember, they weren't just ticked about the rules violation; they were aggrieved about the "negative experience" that they'd had on social media. A boo anda hoo.)

Side note: the person who had purchased Cedar at auction was fine with not going ahead and slaughtering the goat. 

And another side note: a child in California is allowed to back out of a contract within a reasonable time period.

But, for the Shasta Fair, that mattered not.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Shasta Fair officials. 

What a group.

At minimum, they should have waited for things to play out, rather than rush right in and get the goat. Or they could have made this moment to improve their process. Maybe they should spend more time with the 4H children explaining that their animal would be slaughtered for meat. Maybe they should offer a couple of options: raise your goat for meat, or raise your goat for milk and cheese. (Not that I know much about animal husbandry, but I guess this option would only apply to girl goats. Not clear whether Cedar was a B or a G.) Or raise the goat and let it go on to frolic on a goat farm, helping make more goats. 

In any case, sending in armed police men to seize a little goat seems like a pretty over the top response. Who and what are they protecting and serving here? How about they spend their time looking for bad guys. 

Maybe adults should be the adults, and not take their rigid fantasies about how to toughen up little kids out on those little kids. Nine-years-old. FFS.

And, by the way, if Old Yeller had to go - which he did - maybe, if they make a contemporary version of it, the mother can send the young Travis into the house and shoot the damned dog herself.