On the bleat: Oklahoma police officers mistake goat’s cries for ‘damsel in distress’

ENID, Okla. — What seemed like a baaad situation was simply a case of mistaken identity.

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A pair of Oklahoma police officers responding to a call about a “damsel in distress” instead found a jealous goat voicing its displeasure, KOCO-TV reported.

According to body camera video posted to Facebook by the Enid Police Department, officers Neal Storey and David Sneed heard what they believed were cries for help at about 2:45 p.m. CDT. A woman had called the police after hearing the cries. The officers also heard them after arriving and began trotting down a tree-lined dirt road, The Washington Post reported.

“That’s a person. I think that’s a person,” Sneed told Storey on the video as the two officers quickened their pace to a sprint.

As the two officers ran toward what they believed was a person calling for help, they stopped near a pen at the farm and began to laugh. The sounds were coming from a goat.

“It’s a goat?” one of the officers is heard on the video.

“I mean, you could say the goat was crying for help,” Storey told the Post. “I think he was just a little jealous that he got moved from his buddy.”

The farmer at the residence confirmed that story to the officers, noting that the animal had been separated from a friend.

More than a friend, apparently.

The goat, which was standing inside the pen with a dog when the two officers arrived at the scene, was trying to horn in on a “date” another male goat was having with the farm’s only female, the Post reported.

“From a long distance, it sounds like ‘help,’” Storey told the farmer while laughing about the situation.

The goat, meanwhile, continued to bleat loudly as he objected to the mating going on nearby.

“The farmer mentioned he was going to give him some extra food and some treats to calm him down there after we left,” Sneed told the Post.

Maegan Perdue, with the University of Maryland’s agriculture and natural resources college, told the newspaper that the goat’s reaction was not surprising.

“Goats are herd animals and don’t like to be alone,” Perdue said. “They tend to vocalize a lot when they are separated from the rest of their herd and also at feeding time when they want to be fed.”

Sneed said he was glad that the call turned into an amusing story.

“There’s a lot of negative things going on in the world right now,” Sneed told the Post. “To just kind of sit and see that goat situation — you know, it could’ve been a serious thing, but it ended up being an amusing story. It could make someone smile and laugh, and I just wanted to spread a little bit of joy in the world.”

The Enid Police Department summed up the incident perfectly.

“Sometimes a call can really get your goat,” the police department wrote on Facebook.