Teachers College Community School students stepped out on a fine May morning to greet the city's newest weed wackers. In a initiative dubbed “Goatham,” 24 goats were let loose in a two-acre area of neighboring Riverside Park to do what they do best, which is to eat weeds and other unwanted plants. The four-legged lawn-care practitioners were met with some clever turns of phrase by the students, who chanted, “Ready, Set, Goat!” as the goats were led from a trailer at 120th Street and Riverside Drive, just down the street from Teachers College.

GOAT pattern

(Photo Credit: @RiversidePark on Twitter)

Leslie Brody, who captured the event for The Wall Street Journal, reports that “goats can consume 25 percent of their body weight in a day and leave behind natural fertilizer.“ There were no documented jokes about goat-made fertilizer. According to Brody, 11-year-old Amani Pettway, a TCCS student, confessed that “she was scared of the goats at first but planned to get to know them by telling them her plans to be a psychologist and a rapper.” That inspired her friend, 10-year-old Gia Calderon, to suggest, ““You can be a GOAT rapper!’ She explained that GOAT stands for “Greatest of All Time.”

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