my friend told me that her boyfriend got her a super cool rock while they were on vacation together and you would not BELIEVE my disappointment when i realized she was talking about her engagement ring
*holds your head in my hands* im sorry i let you down
Little girl was part of a county fair agro-educational program where they raise an animal for a few months and at the end it’s slaughtered. Supposed to teach them about the economics of farming and stuff.
But the little girl loved her goat so much she was crying on the day her goat was supposed to be taken away, so her mom sent the county fair people an email saying “I’ll pay for the goat and any expenses. We’ve had several deaths in the family in the past year, I don’t wanna take away one more thing my little girl loves.” Technically the goat had already been sold at auction, so the mom was on the hook for about $1000, only about $70 of which would have been profit for the county fair.
The county fair people were irate and got law enforcement involved, over this “breach of contract”. They literally got a fucking judge to sign a search warrant, authorizing them to go to this little girl’s house and search every room and every cabinet or box “large enough to contain a small goat”. The sheriff’s deputies seized the goat, and whoever they gave it to immediately slaughtered it, though they were supposed to wait until some kind of agreement had been worked out.
In the county fair’s initial email correspondence with the girl’s mother, they made it clear that they were pissed off because the story of the little girl who loved her goat was circulating on social media making them look bad, and they felt the girl needed to be taught a lesson about keeping your promises or whatever. So they refused the mother’s offer to pay for it, and insisted they get the goat. Even if it meant sending the fucking cops into her house lmao.
the congressman who bought the goat didn’t have any objections to the family saving the goat from slaughter either! it’s fucking insane that the cops were so eager to play act their swat commando fantasies that they played stooge to the benefit of no one except some self important local organizers!
Alternate link, LAtimes locks their stuff behind paywalls sometimes
Don’t forget the part where the goat wasn’t where they had a warrant to search, so they drove 500 miles, leaving the area they have legal jurisdiction in, then searched a farm they didn’t have a warrant for ans seized the goat. The fair then had the goat slaughtered, even though a court had ordered them to keep it alive until ownership was resolved and despite the fact that both potential owners of the goat had decided to keep it alive.
They broke multiple laws in order to “teach” a little girl the “lesson” that “everybody has to follow the rules”.
I sure hope all of the complaints sent to Shasta District Fair CEO Melanie Silva, whose decisions these were and continues to defend her actions, are polite and don’t waste too much ink. I’m certain nobody would take advantage of the fact that the Sasha District Fair and Event Center’s contact page lists their phone and fax numbers, not to mention the email form below that.
Would be a shame if that information was to circulate far an wide, and ruin that despicable woman’s easter holidays
I found the lawsuit filing. It is a work of art, brief and to the point. If you read nothing else, check out page 2, the section headed Nature of the Action. Magnificent.
One of the things that bugs me in the notes is a bunch of people being like ‘it’s a livestock animal, it’s her fault for getting attached’ and.
My dudes, I cannot emphasize enough that the little girl’s emotional attachment to the goat is in fact the least of the issues with this story. The main issue in this story is the fact that a bunch of cops broke multiple laws, including the unlawful entry to the property the goat was being held, the unlawful seizure and destruction of said goat, and the unlawful use of a criminal search warrant in a civil dispute case, just to start with.
The little girl owned the goat. At no point in the proceedings - and indeed at no point in the proceedings in the course of the normal auction-purchase-slaughter of a livestock animal in this program - did the fair own the goat. At no point in the proceedings did the person who successfully bid on the goat actually own it - he had made the winning bid to purchase rights to the meat. He hadn’t even done that yet! The goat legally and incontrovertibly belonged to the little girl. The very worst that should have happened in this story is a brief property ownership dispute in a civil court.
The fair CEO decided to unlawfully force the auction of the goat, and, when the girl’s mother began to dispute her actions, to make a false claim of theft, with precisely ZERO legal basis, calling the cops on an already emotionally fragile child, and then had the temerity to be angry with the child’s mother because the story was making them look bad on social media.
Regardless of your opinion on the meat industry, livestock slaughter, or 4H, 'cops drive 500 miles, perform an illegal search, seizure and destruction of an American citizen’s property, on the word of a biased 3rd party with zero legal rights to the property in question’ should make you angry. Because it is a violation of civil rights, and also had no motive besides needless cruelty to an already grieving child.
News to know: The next court update on this is sometime in October 2024. I’m watching this case because it covers a lot of different facets of how contracts work, minors rights, property rights in the face of law enforcement seizures and searches, and how does one county fair have so much brutality to wield against a then-nine-year-old.
I would not be surprised if this gets bogged down again with more counter-suits. It’s absolutely ghoulish that they’re doing all this over less than 1000$ of goat and one little girls grief. I hope that the judge who sees this case knows just how dangerous it is to dismiss, since this is a matter of third-party property rights infringement using law enforcement agents as bludgeons. The Sheriffs *cannot* be allowed to maintain extrajudicial authority.
Ifyou read the legal filing, the county fair that initiated this whole thing was only entitled to $63 worth of the goats’ sale price.
They paid over 4700x the money they would have made if the sale had gone through.
EDIT: I’m wrong. The COUNTY paid $300,000 for their overexuberant sheriffs.
The family still has a case out against the fair, who STILL HASNT TOLD THE COURT WHO CALLED THE SHERIFF.
Unfortunately, a judge ruled that the employees of the county fair are “immune” to the case the family brought to them. So those specific people in all their spiteful, vindictiveness were not directly punished for what they did. That is the end to this saga:
You guys I ran our county 4-H program in Minnesota and let me tell you. I know in my personal life only one person I consider a true asshole and an arch nemesis and that person is the fucking treasurer of the county fair board.
She would pull this kind of shit in a heartbeat.
why is lake superior so dangerous? i cant find anything online that will give my access (not american!)
it’s the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area, you could lose a couple of smaller countries in there and not even notice. (vs Europe)
on top of that, it’s a Northern lake, so the water never really gets warmer than 50 F (10 C) even in the heat of summer, and it’s famous for sudden violent storms that destroy ships and buildings alike. this thing has a MASSIVE body count because it’s also a major shipping thoroughfare.
tldr it wants to eat you so so bad
She is also over 1,300ft/400m deep at her deepest. Once she has eaten you, she will not give you back. Lake Superior doesn’t give up her dead.
And when Bunjy says “the largest by surface are” what that means is: Lake Superior is a whopping 31,700 square miles (82,103 square km) of water. The only reason she is not an inland sea is because she is freshwater.
She has tides. She has rip currents, like an ocean does. You don’t even have to go out on a boat to get got by her, all you have to do is step into her icy waters in the wrong spot. She has ice formations that aren’t “icebergs” on the technicality that they didn’t calve from glaciers, even though they look and act the same.
(photo by Paul Berger)
She LOOKS like an ocean when you are at her shores. This is from a location on the Minnesota side shore.
(photo by George Ilstrup)
She is huge, icy, and hungry. This makes her very dangerous. Not to be fucked around with, because you WILL find out.
Two other quick notes:
Her first name is Gitchigumi, which means “Great Sea” in Anishinaabemowin.
Give “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” a listen for some Lake Superior true lore.
Anonymous
