I spotted our billy goat After Noem made the death march to her farms gravel pit, where she shot Cricket, she was apparently still in an uncontrollable rage.
Walking back up to the yard, I spotted our billy goat, Noem wrote.
The nameless goats only sin in that moment was being in Noems field of view.
In the book, Noem tried to justify her snap decision to kill the goat by writing that it loved to chase her children and would knock them down and butt them, leaving them terrified. The animal also had a wretched smell.
But apparently none of that had been a big enough problem to do anything about it. Not until Noem got angry enough to kill a dog and decided she needed to kill again.
Noem says she dragged the goat to the gravel pit, tied him to a post, and shot at him. But the goat jumped when she shot.
My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job, she wrote.
She studiously avoided saying she wounded the goat with the first shot, but thats the implication.
Not wanting him to suffer, she added apparently experiencing her first twinge of feeling, after saying that killing the dog was not pleasant I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.
The goat story not only reflects a disturbing lack of self-control, but also raises a question of law.