The Nigerian pygmy teacup dwarf goat, named Porsche Lane, scampered through a doggy door, hooves pounding on the wood floor.
I drove six hours to the city of Powell in northern Wyoming to meet this 30-pound, white -and-brown-spotted goat. She was shyer than I expected, dressed in a diaper and onesie and letting out occasional noises.
“She’s a house goat,” explained her owner Venus Bontadelli, who has faded blue dye in her hair and was wearing a “We the People” shirt.
She bottle fed Porsche when she was a baby.
“She has decided to take over my pillow with me,” Bontadelli laughed. “So I have my corner and she has the pillow.”
But that could have come to an end.
Last summer, after getting an anonymous complaint, a police officer showed up at Bontadelli's door and told her goats aren’t allowed in the tiny city, including at this row of one-story homes near an oil field supplier.
“We moved to what we thought was wild Wyoming,” said Bontadelli, a California transplant who’s wanted to move here for decades. “This is where everybody's supposed to be so much freer, but yet this seems more like communist rule than in Commiefornia.”
Like many pockets of the Mountain West, Wyoming is known as a bastion for individual liberties. But, when it comes to owning animals, there are some restrictions, and those pets often don’t have their own rights.
“Animals are often depicted as a thing, as property, as beings who we can simply use,” said Pablo Perez Castello, who studies animal ethics as a research fellow at the Animal Law Program at the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver.
He continued, “It is important to recognize that they are community members who have a right to reside in human/animal communities.”
Bontadelli and her neighbors tried to do just that as she pleaded her case to the city last summer and asked for an exotic pet permit. Neighbors said Porsche is part of their community, and they liked hearing her gentle sounds amid all the industrial noises on the block.
Powell City Councilor Troy Bray responded: “I don't think a pygmy goat is that big a deal. But we don't want a whole herd of Nubians running around town either.”
Nubians are a much larger goat breed.
“I move to deny the appeal,” Bray said.
Porsche Lane was getting evicted, all the way back to California to stay at Bontadelli’s friend’s house.
“I was pretty broken,” Bontadelli said.
But then a national libertarian law group, the Pacific Legal Foundation, sparked headlines as it offered to represent Bontadelli for free. The organization defends constitutional rights when it thinks the government has overstepped. In this case, it argued the city of Powell had denied Bontadelli her right to due process.
And they won. This January, the city settled and Porsche Lane was allowed to come home.
“We can’t imagine not having her now,” Bontadelli said, as she tried to lure Porsche Lane out of one of her hiding spots under the dining room table.
That shy little goat may spark a policy change in Powell. The city is researching pet laws in other places, like Colorado Springs or Midvale City near Salt Lake. Midvale Mayor Dustin Gettel helped legalize pygmy goats there a few years ago to help a local owner.
“It really seemed like this is an episode of ‘Parks and Recreation’ that I was a part of,” he joked.
When I first reached out to Gettel, he responded immediately. He said he considers the ordinance his “crowning achievement” from his days as a councilor. A little white goat statue even sits atop his desk.
“I want, as an elected official to as much as possible, let people live their lives and if they want to have fun, quirky pets, who am I to tell them that they can't?” he said.
Since changing the law, Gettel has not seen “herds of Nubians” running around town. The Midvale City law says if you’re going to have a pygmy goat, you have to have two — and only two — since if they’re alone, they can be loud or lonely. The goats’ shelter also needs to be at least 50 square feet, among other regulations.
“I affectionately have been referred to as the goat guy here in Midvale,” Gettel said. “And it’s definitely a nickname I don’t mind.”
If Gettel is the goat guy, Jessica Gifford is the snake lady. She’s a snake educator in Cody, Wyo., near Powell.
“I have about 30 total,” she said, opening the door to her small snake room filled with enclosures.
“Oh my god, my heart is beating,” I said, as I took in the ceiling-high shelf filled with stacked tubs, each holding a baby snake.
I was much more squeamish around them than with Porsche Lane, especially when Gifford held up what she described as her least intimidating snake, a Russian sand boa, for me to touch.
“Look at you go,” Gifford explained, after it took me several minutes of psyching myself up to give the foot-long snake a tap.
I visited Gifford and faced my reptile fears because Gifford has also been following the goat case ever since the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers posted about it.
A few years ago she wasn’t able to speak up when the Wyoming Game & Fish Department banned a bunch of big snakes, and she doesn’t want to see anything like that happen again.
“When one animal is affected, that's not a cat or dog, it affects us all,” Gifford said. “When people are banning things like a pygmy goat, a furry creature that is super cute and stuff, that doesn't bode well for snakes that are scary to a lot of people.”
The city of Powell also sparked national headlines back in 2007 after debating whether to allow rabbits in town. Now, households are allowed up to three breeding pairs. There’s also been debates about how many chickens are allowed in town (four per household).
Gifford urges pet owners to speak up, whether it’s rabbits, chickens, snakes or goats.
Over in Bontadelli’s backyard, Porsche Lane chows down on a bundle of hay as chickens cluck in their coop.
Watching lovingly, Bontadelli said she hopes the city passes animal laws that respect residents and their rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“And I don't know,” she said, “my happiness just involves a little pygmy goat that brightens my little world.”
Porsche has a 5-year permit because of the lawsuit settlement, but the city has yet to make up its mind regarding the fate of other exotic pets like her. While researching laws in other places, councilors are considering striking the exotic pet ordinance altogether.
Bontadelli said she is already planning to move outside city limits to have a bit more freedom.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio, KJZZ in Arizona and NPR, with additional support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
