Arthur and Dan

[OpenMike]

Odd stories don't get TV reporter's goat


By KEN HOFFMAN
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Dan Rather's big TV news break was covering Hurricane Carla in Galveston in 1961.

Arthur Kent became known as the Scud Stud for his wartime reporting during the first Gulf War.

Edward R. Murrow's broadcasts during the Nazi bombing raids of London in World War II are legendary.

Maybe, just maybe, Channel 26 reporter Sally MacDonald had a career-making story fall in her lap last week. She covered a woman trying to find her kidnapped goat in the Montrose section of Houston.

I'm not sure it's legal to own a goat in Houston, even in weird, wonderful Montrose.

But in Montrose, that's the least weird part of the story. Why would anybody kidnap a goat?

"I was driving to work and saw a sign on a telephone pole," MacDonald said. "It said, 'Kidnapped.' That caught my eye, naturally, and I went to look at it closer. The sign had a photo of a little goat on it. It was the goat that was kidnapped. That's something you don't see every day.

"I pitched the story at work and they said I should do it. I knew it was an unusual story."

It turned out the 1-year-old goat, named Twyla, was a house pet. Nothing unusual about that.

In Montrose.

The goat had its own chair with a fan next to it, so the goat could keep cool. The goat spent days inside the house and slept on top of a car in the driveway at night.

The goat's owner, a single woman, loved this goat. She also has a couple of cats living inside the house, and a few rabbits who stay outside. But Twyla was her favorite pet.

Again, I'm not sure this is exactly legal.

"I tried to find out if it's OK to own a goat as a house pet in the city of Houston. It's probably not legal, but I never got a straight answer from City Hall," MacDonald said.

Nothing unusual about that, either.

The original poster said the goat was "kidnapped," but the owner changed it to "abducted" after people made puns on the word "kid." A baby goat is called a kid.

"This woman loved her goat," MacDonald said. "She bottle-fed it from the time it was 3 weeks old. It wasn't livestock to her. It was her pet and she really cared for it. She said that none of her neighbors complained about the goat."

There is a reward of $200 for Twyla's safe return. But the owner and MacDonald agree that Twyla was probably turned into somebody's dinner days ago.

The Case of the Kidnapped Kid is the new No. 1 oddest story of MacDonald's career. It just narrowly beats watching a man sleep in a dog house.

"This was when I worked in Beaumont. A man was sentenced to sleep in a dog house after he was accused of making his son sleep in a dog house. One night, I just stayed on the sidewalk outside his house and watched him sleep in the dog house," she said.

"But in Beaumont, weird is normal."

• My once chunky friend Yonny Demeris did it! He got down below 200 pounds right before his Aug. 1 deadline.

Last May, Demeris almost fainted when he stepped on a scale and saw 240 pounds. Actually, he barely could see the dial. There was something blocking his sight line. His stomach.

He came to me for help. I put the lad on a strict low-carb, low-fat diet and made him exercise each day. We went for long bikes. I felt like Mickey in the early Rocky movies. Slowly, surely, the weight started melting off Demeris.

Monday morning, Demeris stepped on the scale again: 199 1/4 pounds. He's lean and trim and feels 10 times healthier.

You know something? I think I liked him better heavy.

ken.hoffman@chron.com

[Promotions Guy]

I thought Rather's BIG break came being one of the young reporters on the scene for JFK in dallas.