It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

Hey, I'm WBEC reporter Monica Eng, and on a recent chilly Tuesday morning, I met up with questioner, Jeannie Cuff.

Before we talked about her question, she thought it would be helpful for me to meet her next-door neighbor, Sandy.

See, Jeannie and Sandy have lived side by side for more than a decade, and they've got a complicated relationship.

Here's why.

Oh, hello, I'm Sandy Laverini.

I live in the Portage Park neighborhood.

And what I have in my backyard is a typical Chicago backyard where I have 14 chickens and

two goats at the moment. And you never know what might come next. Sandy's got long gray here and a

warm smile. She takes us into her backyard. Hi girls, it's so money. Here we meet cats, chickens, and goats. They roam around a series

of pens, barns, and walkways, and generally don't make too much trouble. But there was that

one night last summer when one of them made quite a racket.

I'll let the two neighbors explain.

Jeannie starts.

In July, one of the goats gave birth at three in the morning.

And you saw someone being killed outside.

Because it was this horrible screaming noise.

He said, and I did just stand by and watch, and it was astonishing, and it was amazing.

But also a little baffling to her neighbor, Jeannie.

When we got back to Jeannie's house, she explained she'd never imagined she'd be woken by a screaming goat in Chicago.

And this wasn't her first surprising livestock encounter in the city.

Like her babysitter?

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