Waddle aside, duckies — there’s a new gang on campus. Whitman continues its trailblazing environmentalist efforts by investing in farm-grown goats to mouth-mow to grass and eat away at the community’s mountainous plastic consumption.

“Nine full-time goats will eat grass on Ankeny, by Cleveland Commons, Stanton, etc.,” a sustainability committee representative informed The Wire upon the project’s announcement this week. “We’ll no longer require gasoline for conventional mowers.”

“We debated between goats or cows,” he discloses, “but surprisingly, goats are not only uglier but also eco-friendlier.” According to the FAO, goats produce 8x less CO2 emissions than their cow companions. 

The goats come from Humor Homestead, a local farm specializing in raising goats to ingest any and everything, just like the tin-can-gobbling creatures on Saturday morning cartoons. Plastic has been piling up since Walla Walla suspended its recycling, so our furry friends will be taking shifts, alternating between working the lawn and working the landfills. 

An unexpected bonus to bringing in the billies is the foundation of a mammal mascot. “We hope the grass and plastic they eat will beef them up as large as mountain goats,” an ASWC representative tells us. “Then we can expand beyond just the Whitman Blues. The Whitman Blue Mountain Goats.”

Some students are wary of the new changes. A Lyman resident exclaims, “Whitman juniors already don’t clean up after their puppy-mill-looking dogs when they crap all over Ankeny. Now I gotta avoid goat feces, too? And bleating will be no improvement to regular mower motor sounds.” 

But the common good prevails, so the goats begin binging this upcoming Monday. “We predict everything will go smoothly and end up being really successful,” according to the sustainability committee representative. “Our only concern now is the potential unionizing.”