Teachers College Community School students stepped out on a fine May morning to greet the city's newest weed wackers. In a initiative dubbed “Goatham,” 24 goats were let loose in a two-acre area of neighboring Riverside Park to do what they do best, which is to eat weeds and other unwanted plants. The four-legged lawn-care practitioners were met with some clever turns of phrase by the students, who chanted, “Ready, Set, Goat!” as the goats were led from a trailer at 120th Street and Riverside Drive, just down the street from Teachers College.

Leslie Brody, who captured the event for The Wall Street Journal, reports that “goats can consume 25 percent of their body weight in a day and leave behind natural fertilizer.“ There were no documented jokes about goat-made fertilizer. According to Brody, 11-year-old Amani Pettway, a TCCS student, confessed that “she was scared of the goats at first but planned to get to know them by telling them her plans to be a psychologist and a rapper.” That inspired her friend, 10-year-old Gia Calderon, to suggest, ““You can be a GOAT rapper!’ She explained that GOAT stands for “Greatest of All Time.”

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