Hi, you have reached the Atlas Obscira podcast line.

Leave me a message about a strange, unusual, or surprising place that happens to be near where you grew up or where you live now.

Hi, my name's Katie, and I'm calling about the bronze statue of a goat in downtown Spokane.

It is also a machine-operated vacuum.

And you have an entry about the goat on the website, but it doesn't mention that the goat was actually welded by the welding nun, Sister Paula Turnbull.

And I just think she has such a fun story, and the goat is such a staple and it's such an icon in Spokane, my hometown.

And I would love for you guys to do just a deeper discussion of the famous garbage goat.

Thanks so much.

Katie, thank you for the call, and you are absolutely correct.

We have an entry on the website for the garbage-eating goat.

It was added by user Badgers of Doom, but there was no mention made of the welding nun, Sister Paula

Mary Turnbull, which is a pretty big oversight. So I think we're going to take this episode,

and we're going to correct that. But first, we're going to need to explain the garbage-eating goat

itself.

The goat is a sculpture made out of copper and brass. It's got metal ears, metal horns,

a little metal beard. It's all welded together. And as Katie mentioned, it also,

this is really the best part about it, it also has a vacuum inside of it, a vacuum that inhales every single piece of trash you feed it. Paper, plastic, food, apparently mittens,

if you're not holding onto them. And this strange trash vacuuming goat has been helping

keep Riverfront Park in Spokane, Washington,

clean for over 40 years, ever since it was first installed for the 1974 World's Fair.

Well, I saw the goat the year it went up, you know, for the expo.

This is Tom Keefe.

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