Mark Healey has a pair of pet goats. “He has no respect whatsoever for me,” Healey says. “I think this is how it starts. This is how crazy cat ladies get a bunch of cats. I might end up being a crazy goat guy.”
He tells the story of how he ended up with a set of goats living in his yard on Occy’s latest installment of the Occ-Cast. It’s just one story in a nearly-hour-long conversation that includes… well, everything. From big wave surfing to spearfishing and breath-holding to hunting, Healey is living life to the absolute fullest.
The story of how he came to be a goat-owner begins on a hunting trip. After a missed shot at a goat that caused it to run a few hundreds yards away, Healey looked a little closer. “I started glassing my binos,” Healey explains, “and I see this little black ear just on the backside of a hill. I’m like, ‘no, it has a baby.'”
Just then, a group of hunters some distance away began firing their rifles, and the mother goat disappeared into the bush. Healey, not knowing exactly how old the baby was, walked over to where he’d seen the ear. He found a baby goat, just a few hours old, the umbilical cord still attached. “This thing is not going to last here,” he thought to himself. “I either have to finish it or I’ve got to throw it in my backpack. I was like, ‘man, I don’t have the heart to kill this thing,'” Healey laughed. “So I put it in my backpack, and now he lives here.”
That’s just one small snippet of a pretty incredible hour filled with stories from Healey’s crazy life, and they’re all worth listening to.
