Goats eat the vine that ate the South--Kudzu

NY Times:

Summer is settling onto Missionary Ridge overlooking this southeast Tennessee city. Swallows glide on the warm breeze rustling the hackberry trees, kudzu vines sprout along the hillside and the goats are back at work.

Chattanooga’s goats have become unofficial city mascots since the Public Works Department decided last year to let them roam a city-owned section of the ridge to nibble the kudzu, the fast-growing vine that throttles the Southern landscape.

The Missionary Ridge goats and the project’s tragicomic turns have created headlines, inspired a folk ballad and invoked more than their share of goat-themed chuckles.

“Usually, in dealing with this, you’ve got to get people past the laugh factor,” said Jerry Jeansonne, a city forestry inspector and the program’s self-described “goat dude.”

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Kudzu, which is native to Asia, was introduced in the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, according to the United States Forest Service. It arrived in the South several years later, becoming a popular ornamental vine, then a forage and erosion-control crop. In the Great Depression, the federal government paid farmers to plant it.

First called “the miracle vine,” kudzu eventually came to be known as “the vine that ate the South.” It grows at an astonishing rate of a foot a day, smothering flora, swallowing houses and blanketing the landscape.

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Guard donkeys accompanying the herd earned more guffaws and proved ineffective when dogs attacked, killing two goats and mauling a third. This year, llamas replaced the donkeys.

There have been the logistical problems of goat-proof fences, gawkers and the live electric wire. Mr. Jeansonne himself roped an escapee and hauled it back to the pen.

But the headaches have been worth it, he said. Walking a fence line, he held one hand high to show the height of the kudzu before the herd was released. The vines are gone now from the tunnel and the hillside above, some areas newly planted with grass.

“It was kudzu up to an elephant’s eye,” Mr. Jeansonne said.

The drama of the goats inspired the songwriter Randy Mitchell to write “Ode to Billy Goats.” A disc jockey for a local country radio station said the song, which ends with a chorus of bleating, was requested daily for weeks last fall.

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Too bad the experiment wasn't on Tallahachee Ridge instead of Missionary Ridge. Every great country and western song needs at least one or two good puns.

Kudzu is an invasive plant, but there is something attractive about its swallowing of expanses of unmaintained landscape. The article also talks about how it swallows houses too, and I have seen it. In my part of Texas we have other plants that can overtake houses and the landscape. In the competition for controlling our environment man has to be constantly battling invasive plants. Environmentalist who have never lived in the country have no idea, but dealing with trumpet vine would give them a dose of reality. I wonder if goats eat trumpet vine?