Texas Firefighters Using Goats To Eat Up Dry Brush

VICTORIA, Texas (AP) — Some hungry goats have been put on two months of fire-prevention duty in South Texas.

City officials in Victoria are renting the barnyard animals as part of an experiment for the goats to eat dry, flammable brush at Riverside Park.

Fire prevention officials at the Texas A&M Forest Service are monitoring the project involving more than two dozen goats trucked each day to the park. The animals eat their way through sometimes poisonous scrub that's closed parts of Riverside Park since 1998.

Goat owners Terry and Susan Hatfield get $1,200 a week for the project that began Monday. The Hatfields run a petting zoo in Port Lavaca (luh-VAH'-kuh).

Councilman Tom Halepaska, who backs the program, says the goats can easily make their way along the steep banks of the river.

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