Goats

The owner of the land next to the Bosque is originally from the northeastern part of Brazil, Ceará to be exact. It's an area that traditionally suffers from severe droughts, so it's not odd that many people raise goats. It's said that goats will eat anything, especially if they're hungry. I remember driving through Ceará a few years ago and I was impressed with the number of goats alongside the highways. They were everywhere ... and they were eating everything they could get between their teeth. I guess under these circumstances, one gets to like goat meat. My neighbor, a prominent lawyer in Santarém is no exception. Although every square inch of his land is fenced, his caretaker allows the goats to run loose along the roadside to eat the lush green grass that grows there during the rainy season. I wouldn't be talking about goats, except that we noticed that the newly planted palm trees along the entrance to one side of the Bosque were being eaten to the ground. At first we thought of caterpillars and grasshoppers, but one day Cleuson discovered that the goats were moving over to our land to do their thing. Young palm fronds can't be all that bad. Click on the image for a better view of the culprits.