Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Got Your Goat

The best laid plans:

West Point cadets attempting to nab the U.S. Naval Academy's mascot ahead of the annual Army-Navy football game ended up grabbing a different goat, according to a report.

U.S. Military Academy cadets traveled this weekend to a farm near Annapolis, Maryland, that is home to Navy mascot Bill, who belongs to a long line of goat mascots with the same name. Cadets gave chase to the spooked goats. And instead of grabbing Bill No. 37, they came away with Bill No. 34, a one-horned, 14-year-old retiree, according to The New York Times...

"The U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy are disappointed by the trust that was broken recently between our brothers and sisters in arms. These actions do not reflect either academy's core values of dignity and respect," read a prepared statement attributed to superintendents Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams and Vice Adm. Sean Buck.

I've become less and less impressed with Darryl Williams, but at least there's a reason for signing on to that statement:

Nabbing mascots is a decades-long service academy tradition, typically viewed by the perpetrators as a prank. But it has been officially off-limits since the early 1990s.

It was sort-of expected back in my day.

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