By Vanesa Brashier, editor@bluebonnetnews.com
Deputies with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report Friday morning of a subject wandering near traffic at the Dayton underpass. When Deputy Shandalynn Rhame arrived, she approached a residence where the subject was being held and observed that the “subject” was a young goat.
“Due to the fact that the female deputy had an authoritative presence, the goat walked up to the deputy and surrendered,” joked Sheriff Bobby Rader in a statement. “The deputy placed the ‘darling doeling’ in her patrol unit and delivered her to the LCSO livestock sergeant … At this time, we are trying to determine if Darling Doeling escaped and is a fugitive or if she was free to roam.”
Rader said Rhame is quickly becoming known as the department’s animal whisperer. In December 2017, Rhame was called to a disturbance on SH 321 in Dayton where an enormous hog was found wandering along the roadway, causing a danger to itself and nearby traffic.
The former domestic show pig had escaped its pen and was being held by neighbors, who had secured the beast with a tiny dog leash that could have been broken by “a miniature Chihuahua with a bad attitude,” the sheriff’s office said at the time. The hog’s owner was found a short time later and returned, but not before Rhame snapped a selfie with it looking over her shoulder.
Rhame says the animal whisperer moniker is more humorous by the fact that she doesn’t even like animals.
“I am not an animal person. I don’t have any pets. I don’t have time for them. They expect you to feed them and take care of them, and I just not interested in all that,” she said.
The really cute ones, like ‘Darling Doeling,’ are hard to resist even for non-animal lovers like Rhame, who snapped a selfie with the goat as her backseat prisoner.
“The complainant who was holding the goat inside his house was a take-your-shoes-off-at-the-door kind of person, but there was the goat inside the house, eating out of a dog bowl,” Rhame said with a laugh.
She shrugs off the attention that started last year after her pig selfie, saying that all deputies respond to animal calls.
“We just can’t fit most of them in the back seat of our patrol vehicle,” she said.
If you can help reconnect the goat to its owner, please call the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office at 936-336-4500.
