WITNESS STATEMENT — WS-0131b
Statement of Amos Lee Pritchard — c. 1874
Archive Classification: HOSTILE / LIVESTOCK
“I know what I saw. That goat came through my beans twice that week, ate half the wash off the line, and stood on the porch looking through the window like he owned the place.
Mrs. Schitt says it couldn’t have been theirs because theirs had been tied behind the barn all morning.
Then somebody ought to explain why the rope was still attached to him.”
Archive Note: Mr. Pritchard and the Schitt family had disagreed previously over fencing. The goat’s opinion was not recorded.
WITNESS STATEMENT — WS-0046c
Statement of Martha Louise Ketter — c. 1903
Archive Classification: HOSTILE / LIVESTOCK
“Don’t ask me which Schitt it belonged to. They all said it belonged to somebody else once the deputy arrived.
I told them before that if one more goat got into my flower beds, I was sending the bill.
They laughed.
Nobody laughed Tuesday.”
Archive Note: No surviving invoice has been located. Mrs. Ketter continued to refer to the incident as “that damned Schitt goat business” for several years afterward.
WITNESS STATEMENT — WS-0013f
Statement of Eleanor May Vickers — c. 1921
Archive Classification: PERSONAL / RELUCTANT
“Walter is a good man. I want that understood before anything else is written down.
He’d been worried about the money and I suppose a man gets ideas when he thinks he’s run out of proper ones.
Yes, I knew where the wagon came from.
No, it wasn’t ours.
I asked him to take it back before daylight. He said he would.
He didn’t.”
Archive Note: Mrs. Vickers reportedly became tearful during the statement and declined to identify the wagon’s owner. No charges associated with the matter have been located.
WITNESS STATEMENT — WS-0224s
Statement of Clarence “Clary” Webb — c. 1889
Archive Classification: INCONCLUSIVE / ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION
“There was a goat there. I’m reasonably certain of that.
I saw it come around the side of the shed and cross toward the road. Brownish, maybe gray. Had horns.
Somebody asked if it was the Schitt goat.
Could’ve been.
Somebody else asked if it was Harlan’s goat.
Could’ve been that one too.
Truth is, from where I was standing, it was mostly just goat.”
Archive Note: Mr. Webb was subsequently shown descriptions of three goats believed to have been in the area. He identified all three as “possibly the one.”
Archive Determination: Witness credible. Goat unresolved.
Deep: You do realize none of these people agree on much of anything.
Crock: That’s why they’re called witness statements instead of facts.
Deep: Two of them aren’t even sure whose goat it was.
Crock: One of ’em wasn’t sure which goat it was.
Deep: And you consider that useful testimony?
Crock: Deep, around here knowing it was a goat narrows things down considerably.
— Crock & Cousin Deep, Archive Notes