They came spilling out of the trailer in twos and threes, tentative at first, squinting into the sudden sunlight and a little unsure of the new terrain. 

Then they saw green. 

Then it was a pell-mell rush toward the sprawling buffet of a vacant lot at High School Road and SR305. The salad bar was open. The goats would be first in line. 

“They’re happy. They’re doing what goats are designed to do,” said Tammy Dunakin of Vashon-based Rent-A-Ruminant, as her goats set about denuding the landscape. “They’re designed to eat ‘browse’ – not feed or hay, that’s not their main thing. They love to climb, and they love new things because they’re very smart and very inquisitive. 

“This kind of meets all those things that they love.”

The menu on the one-acre lot next to the Chevron station featured nuisance plants like ivy and blackberry, along with various scrub and saplings. The goats munched it all, briefly napped en masse to the delight of passersby, then got up and munched again. 

When the second trailer-full arrived that afternoon, the herd numbered around 120 goats of all shapes, sizes and breeds – Nubians, Alpines, LaManchas, Nigerian dwarfs and more – all clearly pleased to be gainfully employed, on this day, in public service.  

Goats have been used for vegetation management in Bainbridge parks before, at Blakely Harbor and Fort Ward. This is the first time they’ve been used to clear land for a trail.  

The Parks Foundation hired the goats as an eco-friendly way to prep the lot for construction of the new Sound To Olympics Trail extension, the Sakai Pond Connector. The ruminants’ “work” now done, a City of Bainbridge Island contractor will move in and build the trail. 

The 10-foot-wide, multi-use trail will run north from the 305/High School intersection to the southeast corner of Sakai Park. There, the path will link up with trails and boardwalks built last year by the Park District’s Summer Trails Crew, also funded by the Parks Foundation. 

City Councillor Leslie Schneider, a big STO booster, peppered social media with photos and videos of “the May munch” (her favorite goat was “the long-bearded mama”) and plumped the project for constituents.

“My guess is that most islanders have never been to Sakai Park and probably don’t even know that there is a Sakai Pond,” Schneider said. “Now that there are trails through the park, this small section of the STO will make an important connection to the park from a very visible corner. And regeneration of the native environment is the vision behind clearing the invasives.”

Don Willott of Friends of the STO Trail echoed Schneider.  

“That’s the experience we’ve had with the John Nelson Trail,” Willott said. “Even though the trail was there, it looked like you were going onto private property to get to it. As soon as we put in the trail connection from the STO, where you could see it, the Nelson Trail became a place.”

It’s also good PR for the Sound To Olympics Trail as a concept. The planned cross-island trail corridor and “linear park” met with some controversy when the first leg was built three years ago, from Winslow Way to High School Road. 

Since then, the corridor has been extensively replanted with support from the Parks Foundation’s Friends of the STO fund. Restoration with native plants – “assisted natural regeneration,” in the new parlance – is front-loaded into the Sakai Connector. 

“It was important that this new section of the STO first demonstrate that we’re working on creating a native habitat corridor,” Willott said, “then we build the trail once we’ve demonstrated good faith in making it a beautiful place that we’d like the whole 305 corridor to be.” 

Clearing land by cloven hoof

The goats were booked for a six-day stay. By day two, the dense, jungle-like lot was largely reduced to a barren landscape of sticks and stems. The sticks and stems would get their turn, too. 

“They eat all the high-quality stuff first, then what’s left is the celery, so to speak, or the peas,” Dunakin said. “They’re very into variety, so when they get on a job they kind of bounce around and taste everything. They want to see what it is and see what’s going to be their favorite.”

Dunakin was worn down from a career as a paramedic and trauma ward staffer. She found new inspiration in the goats she kept at her Vashon Island property. 

“I’d been around trauma and horrific-ness and sadness my whole work life, and I needed out,” she said. “I walked out into my pasture one day and looked at my goats and said, you guys look bored. You need a job.” 

A lightbulb went on. Rent-a-Ruminant was born.

It took a couple of years to get the business off the ground, but land clearing by cloven hoof turned out to be a growth industry. Goats are now routinely used for vegetation control and wildfire deterrence in California. Preventative grazing by goats is credited with saving the Reagan Library when it was threatened by the Simi Valley blazes in 2019. 

Dunakin now has Rent-A-Ruminant franchises in Texas, Florida and Illinois. 

“I’m busier than I could ever hope to be,” she said. “That’s why I franchised.”

The herd’s stay on Bainbridge did attract the attention of local coyotes, some of which spent the first night howling outside the compound. An electric fence and the ominous barks of Brutus, the herd’s imposing guard dog, kept the carnivores at bay. 

“I’ve never had a coyote predation in 17 years of doing this,” Dunakin said. 

Indeed, their six-day stay on Bainbridge done, the intact herd filed dutifully back into their trailer and wheeled off to weedier pastures.

—

The Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation thanks Brown Bear Car Wash/Chevron for their support of the Sound To Olympics Trail-Sakai Pond Connector goat project.