BOZEMAN — When you go to work early in the morning and your job is on the edge of town, you never know what might be waiting for you at the door.
Just ask Paul Gray, who found an unusual visitor at the back door of Grace Bible Church when he arrived at work yesterday morning.
“I came to work about 7 a.m., and I pulled up, and it was a mountain goat, and I was very surprised,” he said.
Gray says he called 9-1-1, which had already received a couple reports of a mountain goat on the south side of town that morning.
He says the goat moved into another more sheltered entryway and basically just hung out.
“One time it was starting to kind of come out of that corralled area. I had a friend in Eastern Montana, and I helped to brand cows one time, so I just kind of had my arms out and said something to it and it turned around and stayed in there," Gray said.
Grays says Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks personnel were very careful with its handling of the animal. They might look sweet, but he says FWP told him they can be deadly.
“One of the FWP people said a gentleman had been killed by one of the mountain goats catching an artery in a guy's leg, so I did some research and said nope, I’m not getting close to that," Gray said.
FWP officials were able to tranquilize the goat and put it into a trailer. According to the FWP Facebook page the animal was safely released into the Gallatin Range, where it likely came from.
Gray said this was the first mountain goat at the church, but not the first animal.
“We’ve had a coyote, a bear, if I remember right, a mountain lion, fox, deer, so we maybe should open our own petting zoo here," he said.
Thanks to the effort of Paul and others at the church, there are plenty of photos and videos of the Greatest Church Visitor of All Time…the GOAT.
