SMITHFIELD, Utah – In an unusual encounter during his morning route, a 14-year-old Utah paperboy said a goat knocked him to the ground and chased him up a tree.
This almost 2-year-old goat may have a villainous name but to owner Marissa Benson and her two young boys, “Voldemort” is just part of the family.
Marissa said, “He’s a really good pet. Good with kid, a good lawn mower.”
Somehow Voldemort’s chain broke.
He got loose and made his way across Utah’s Smithfield Main Street to stumble upon unsuspecting 14-year-old Jaxon Gessel.
“It was dark and I saw this, like, figure,” he said.
Gessel was on his early morning paper route; first he didn’t think much of it.
“Then it made a weird noise, kind of like a grunting noise,” he said.
Gessel said the shadowy figure, Voldemort, started coming towards him.
He said, “And so I looked over and like, ‘What the heck is that?’”
“It just freaked me out when it stood up on its back legs and wrapped its front legs around me and pulled me off,” he said.
He was knocked off his bike and started to run a way.
Jaxon took shelter in this tree.
There he was up in the branches, looking down at the goat, the goat looking back up at him.
The staring contest went on for about an hour.
Meantime Smithfield police officer Brandon Muir got a call about a missing boy.
Muir said, “A juvenile was reported that he had not returned from a paper route and was about an hour and a half overdue.”
The officer was working a missing child case, called in by Gessel’s parents, until he got another call about a boy in a tree and a goat.
“He kind of had his paper bag sitting in the tree where he was; he was about half way up the tree,” Muir said.
Gessel said it was a strange morning, one his classmates won’t soon let him forget.
“It was like, everybody, ‘Hey, goat-boy.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, guys.’”
Though he said faced with Voldemort in the dark, you might react the same way.
“People are just like, ‘Why are you scared of goats,’” he said. “I’m like, that was a freaky goat. I think it’s possessed or something.”
No one was hurt and Voldemort is back to causing trouble at home.
His owners, being Harry Potter fans, have already come up with a nickname for Jaxon Gessel.
“He’s the boy that lived,” Marissa said.
By: Mike Anderson, KSL
