Lightning verses Goat

[bphgravity]

Bad day to be a goat in Florida:

ARCADIA -- Five goats -- one very special to its owner -- were killed and two others injured by lightning on a ranch just east of Arcadia Monday afternoon as a severe thunderstorm swept through DeSoto County.

"It was raining pretty hard and still lightning," she said, "so I drove out toward the horse barn. Just before I made the turn into the barn, I noticed that one of my goats was outside the goat house."

She recognized the 2-month-old goat on the ground.

It was "Gretchen, the bottle-raised goat who I put my heart and soul into," Crouse said. "Immediately, I got a little worried and I drove past the barn and out to the goat house. She was laying very flat," Crouse continued, "and goats hate water, so I knew this was not a good thing."

Crouse said she stopped her vehicle beside Gretchen and jumped out in the rain.

"I yelled her name," Grouse said, "and she didn't lift her head up."

Crouse said she broke into tears. "I just cried and cried. But I picked her up and her little body was still warm. Her eyes were open but it wasn't that shocked-open look. They were just glazed over. So I was hoping she was still alive, that maybe she'd just gotten chilled. I didn't know."

Crouse then looked inside the goat house.

"I peeked and I saw another one of the goats," Crouse continued. "But it looked ... dead. So I looked inside and all but two of them were dead."

The goat house is wooden and the roof is shingled. Grouse says she has no idea why lightning struck that area of the ranch.

To Crouse, Gretchen wasn't just another goat. The baby that Crouse had bottle-fed four times a day was more like her pet dog or cat.

Crouse's husband Charlie had been in the barn during the fierce thunderstorm and came to his wife as the full extent of the horror was revealed.

The two went into their home and waited for the thunderstorm to pass. Then they returned to the goat house "to sort it out."

One of the goats, Crouse discovered, had burn marks up both flanks, "as if you took your finger and drew lines against the grain of her fur," Crouse described. "The fur stood up and all the ends were singed." Another goat appeared only to have its hearing impaired from the volume of the thunderous concussion.

Crouse said she and her husband have only had goats for about five months.

 

[brian john]

30+ years ago a friend of mine lost 12 head of cattle to lightning, this was his profit on his herd for the year.



http://www.mainelincolncountynews.com/index.cfm?ID=7855

http://www.hdforums.com/m_537330/tm.htm

http://www.hdforums.com/m_537330/tm.htm

Lightning has ALWAYS more than fascinated me.

 

[Builder]

When I was a Kid after every major thunder storm we would go out and check the cattle and the barbed wire fences, and at least two or three times a year there would be a place where about 10 wood posts would be blow into toothpicks, and would have to replace,
Now we run about 10 wood posts and drive in a steel post.
Since we have done that we have lost very few wood posts to lightning, and the lost of livestock is less as well, as in many situations the animals would be pressing up against a fence in a storm,
Over the years I remember losing a horse, and a few cattle,

one other interesting situation with lightning,

When my Daughter was a teenager, we had a odd cloud come over the place, and it was producing a few dry lightning strikes (no rain) in the area, My daughter was in the garden at the time, and a bolt hit about 1/4 mile away and at that moment my daughter was picking a flower, and was shocked by the flower in the ground.