Reading Gavin Maxwell’s lively description of a kitchen takeover by goats makes me wonder how we can call them collectively by a term so bland as ‘herd’.  Surely, an ‘insolence’ would be better? Or an opportunism, or an agility of goats?

Not the first alarming account of their strange, ancient, blank yet piercing eyes. Or those of their vacantly gazing grazing cousins, sheep.

‘Their cynical, predatory yellow eyes, bright with ancient, egotistical wisdom, were ever alert for an open door, and more than once I came back to the house from an afternoon’s fishing to find the kitchen in chaos, my last loaves disappearing between agile rubbery lips, and Mairi Bhan posturing impudently on the table.’ 

Source: Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water (London: Penguin, 1974), p. 36

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