Easy to obtain milk (cheese, etc) and meat from the species Capra (not to mention all the other bodily resources), a genteel disposition like a dog (save when it goes "billy" on a few butts), and ability to scratch out a living in marginal ecosystems while acting as garbage disposals (of which our pearl of the Earth seems to be careening towards, and not without the help of the goat – her/is teeth and hooves wreck havoc on vegetation) – all make this fellow earth-dweller a good (if not slightly conflicting) investment in hard times – both economically and ecologically.

And speaking of boats and goats, rich and poor, and the contingency of history on all such dichotomies, Shepard goes on to imagine a world vanquished by global warming, "a sacrificed earth," where "perhaps the oceans will have swallowed most of the topsoil and will be mined by millions of rafting small-scale fisherman and their families, whose goats, dancing on the decks, will provide milk and munch the parts of fish which people cannot eat" (ibid). If we don't watch it, beware the goat shaking her/is booty on a boat – bling, bubbly, bikes and Boulder now artifacts of a previous socio-cultural reality.