Tragic Bible Story Comes True: Little Girl's Pet Goat Taken, Believed to Have Been Barbecued at Demand of Calif. Gov't
In the Old Testament of the Bible, in 2 Samuel 12, God sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke King David for stealing a man’s wife and having the man killed in battle.
To make David understand what he had done, the prophet told a parable, likening David’s crime to taking someone’s pet lamb and slaughtering it for a meal.
In his own words, Nathan explained, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought.
“He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him,” he said. “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him.
“Instead,” Nathan said, the rich man “took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
The story struck David’s heart. The Bible says the king, who had once been a shepherd boy, “burned with anger” and he called for the rich man to either be struck down or be forced to pay “four times over” for the lamb, “because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
Now obviously, the tale about the lamb was told for David to realize his sins and repent, but the story isn’t that improbable — even in the modern world, apparently.
A California family recently filed a lawsuit against the local government and the district’s state fair, alleging they illegally seized and slaughtered their 9-year-old daughter’s pet goat.
I gave my goat to the state fair and they barbecued it — now I’m suing https://t.co/yQXEzPLGMQ pic.twitter.com/ChBnlgThDi
— New York Post (@nypost) March 31, 2023
Defendants named in the lawsuit include the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, the Shasta Fair Association and others involved in the incident.
The white-and-brown Boer goat, named Cedar, was purchased by Jessica Long last April and was quickly adopted as a pet by her daughter, “who bonded with him while feeding and caring for him,” according to The Sacramento Bee.
On June 25, 2022, the family entered Cedar into the Shasta District Fair’s junior livestock auction.
The animals placed on auction are sold for their meat and are destined to be cooked into a meal. The fair rules specified that all animals, once entered into the auction, cannot be returned back to their owners, The Bee reported.
However, the Long family began having second thoughts and decided they didn’t want to sell Cedar off. So, before bidding began, they asked fair officials to allow them to withdraw the animal. Their request was reportedly denied and the goat was auctioned off for $902.
Prompted by her daughter’s tears, Long decided to sneak Cedar out later that night.
“The barn was mostly empty and at the last minute I decided to break the rules and take the goat that night and deal with the consequences later,” Long wrote in a June 27 email to the fair’s manager, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Because she lives in town, Long could not keep the goat at home. So she took him to a Sonoma County farm that sympathized with their plight — promising the buyer and the fair that she would pay them back.
The buyer accepted Long’s request and said they “did not object to the goat being saved from slaughter,” The Bee reported. But fair officials responded by demanding the goat be returned or Long would be charged with the animal’s theft, according to The Bee.
“As a mother I am not unsympathetic regarding your daughter and her love for her animal,” Shasta District Fair CEO Melanie Silva said in an emailed response to Long, according to the Bee. “Having said that please understand the fair industry is set up to teach our youth responsibility and for the future generations of ranchers and farmers to learn the process and effort it takes to raise quality meat.”
She added, “Making an exception for you will only teach [our] youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants.”
Law enforcement eventually got involved and two deputies from the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office reportedly drove over 500 miles to confiscate the goat and then delivered it to the fair “for slaughter/destruction,” The Bee reported.
Imagine Charlotte’s Web except the sheriff from seven counties over drives to the Arable farm and slaughters Wilbur in the second chapter to teach Fern a lesson.
Girl didn’t want goat slaughtered; officials sent deputies – Los Angeles Times https://t.co/Jp7eIbmcwB
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) April 1, 2023
The Longs’ lawsuit alleges the deputies did so without a search warrant, but the sheriff’s office responded by saying that no warrant was needed.
Cedar’s fate is currently unknown but he is believed to have been slaughtered. This was done as a way to end the dispute over the goat’s ownership, Long alleged, according to the Times.
Long called the authorities’ involvement an “egregious waste of police resources” and argued that they violated her family’s 4th Amendment and 14th Amendment rights to due process and protection from unreasonable search and seizure, the Times reported.
Long’s lawsuit is seeking actual, general and punitive damages.
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