R.I.P. Cricket. Now It’s Time to Talk About Kristi Noem’s Goat.
In the universal outrage over South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem executing her wire-haired pointer Cricket, another victim of her cruelty seems to have been forgotten: the male goat she dragged to the same gravel pit and shot dead.
Based on Noem’s own description of the incident in her upcoming memoir, it seems likely that the animal died a terrifying death. Its crime? It had a “disgusting, musky, rancid” smell and butted her children so they fell down and got their clothes dirty.
It’s unclear why Noem, who loves to talk about how she was raised on a farm, was surprised by this behavior: Male goats in rut—a state of arousal during breeding season—become more aggressive and urinate on themselves to generate a smell that only a female of its species could love.