Hot New Industry: Rental Goats

The Chinese lunar calendar denotes 2018 as the year of the dog, though up until now August has been the month of the goat.

A pair of goats were spotted wandering along New York City subway tracks earlier this week, prompting the city's transit authority to retool its train schedules while employees – with the help of comedian Jon Stewart – rounded up the rogue animals and transported them to a nearby animal sanctuary.

And just a few weeks prior, a herd of several dozen goats descended upon a neighborhood just outside of Boise, Idaho, chowing down on grass, weeds and everything green that lay before them.

Goats aren't exactly staples of local Boise wildlife, and the bizarre collection of photos and videos accumulated by residents and local news outlets spread like wildfire – propelling the herd to internet stardom and mentions in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The goats were eventually rounded up as more details of the story came together. As local reporter Joe Parris – who was among the first to post pictures of the goats on Twitter, helping the story go viral – later explained in a Facebook video, the herd was deployed by a local operation called We Rent Goats, which, as the name implies, rents goats out to those interested in using the animals to help clear weeds and plant overgrowth.

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