Killing Goats in Suwanee

by Hal Jacobs

So now you can't kill goats in Suwanee?

That's what I read in Friday's paper. The Herreras wanted to barbecue a little goat. But the neighbors, who were out sitting on their deck, not minding their own
business, called the police.

The whole thing aggravates me so bad, I can barely keep my teeth in my head to write.

This dang metro development thing has gone too far. Now people are telling us what we can and can't kill.

For the last 150 years my people have been killing whatever they want. Chickens, hogs, cows, varmints - sometimes people, but always family, and only under the
most regrettable circumstances.

Now you trying to tell me we can't kill goats?

Why don't you city people just stay where you belong! Back there in concrete land where you never get mud under your athletic shoes. I wished we could build a wall around I-285, The Great Wall of Atlanta, but instead they're building The Great Mall of Atlanta - every 30 miles.

Let me explain something. See, there used to be two kinds of people. City people and country people. When you put a city boy in the country, or vice versa, it was comical. But at least people knew where they belonged. Now you got these
people in the middle. The ones who are just filling the space between the city and the country. Nobody knows who they are, where they came from, or where they're going (they drive like it, too).

What I want to know is: what's going to happen to this great country when there's no country left? It'll be just one great big United States of Atlanta. Concrete from sea to shiny sea.

Sure we need the jobs. I know plenty of people in the construction business. After all, we can't all work for the state and federal government. But let's use some common sense. What good is a job laying carpets in new homes if you can't kill a goat in your backyard?

All I'm saying is, give goat killing a chance.

Sometimes you get a hankering for fresh meat and you don't want to pay full retail price. Sometimes you don't mind getting your hands dirty killing something you want to eat. Sometimes leading a live animal into the backyard for a family barbecue makes more sense than unwrapping five pounds of shrinkwrapped hamburger meat.

If you want to live like a rabbit on lettuce and seaweed, I'm not going to stop you. But it wasn't people like you who defended our country in time of war. It was
the red-meat eaters who stopped the Nazis and kept us all from driving Volkswagons to the nearest weinerschnitzel stand.

And another thing. I don't mind these Hispanics coming in to do the jobs nobody else wants to do. I don't mind living next door to them (long as they keep their music down). And if they want to kill a goat every now and then, more power to them. These are good, hardworking, family people. If you don't want to watch them kill a goat, then go back inside and watch the Nature Channel.

You want to pass some laws? Then pass laws that protect us country people from the cul de sackers. I'm sick and tired of waiting in traffic behind people who only use their four-wheel drive vehicles to get to the car wash and back. I need protection from people who move out to farm country, then want to pass laws against hog farms.

If I want to raise hogs and chickens like my four fathers before me, I shouldn't have to worry about some broccoli-grilling Martha Stewart living next door.

Of course, maybe I'm all wrong. When I was young, cigarette smoking was good for you. Dogs were nicer to people back then, too.

Maybe I've lived too long. But if somebody wants to kill a goat in their backyard, I just don't see any problem with it.

March 20, 1998