Column: Community rallies to find 'runner' baby goat

The post went out just before dark, a desperate plea for help in the wilds of the faceless internet: We've lost our baby goat. By that time, Charlotte and Greg Hrehocik had been searching their Mason Road property in Vermilion for two hours, looking for their Nubian baby they had just brought home. "She's only three months old. She's brown and very scared," Charlotte pleaded. Charlotte had just come home that evening with two goats, the baby and a 3-year-old she named Kaleena. She had just put Kaleena in the barn and returned for the baby when the little one "scooted around me in the trailer, pushed the door open and ran out. I had no idea a baby goat could move that fast." For a while they were able to keep sight of her on their 6 acres along Mason Road — and on the neighbor's property — but couldn't lure her in before the goat bounded away into the woods. The whole idea of getting the goats had been a mission of mercy. The couple have two miniature horses, and one, Monte, is a show horse. When Monte leaves on the weekends to compete, his 23-year-old barn mate "gets upset," Charlotte said. "We decided to get her the goats to be her buddy animals." Facing sundown and no hope, Charlotte turned to a Vermilion Facebook page. Within minutes, strangers started responding. Hundreds shared it, more than 70 commented. Throughout the night, people were messaging Charlotte: "I'm out looking for her in my vehicle." "I live down the road, I'm going out with a flashlight now." "I live in the dip in the road, near the woods, I'm going to look." "I can hear her crying under the power lines on Furnace Road, but it's so dark, I couldn't see her." "It's just crazy how many people were willing to go out and look for this goat," she said. The next morning, Charlotte woke to the best news of all: "I have your goat. She's safe and sound." Seven miles away and many hours later, Natasha Bolyard's cellphone started ringing at 6:30 a.m. It was her friend, Beth Meyers. The connection was very broken, but she caught a few words: Goat. Post. Facebook. Under my truck. It was enough for Bolyard to put together that Meyers found the goat, from the Facebook post Bolyard had shared the night before. "And I'm known around here as the animal person," Bolyard, who has horses and emus and has raised goats in the past, said. She heard enough of Meyers' location — "Darrow. Between Risden and Furnace" — to run over, still in her pajamas, to find Meyers and another passerby just trying to keep the scared little goat trapped under Meyers' truck. "She shot out from one side of the truck and I don't know how, I flew around and dove like a baseball player and grabbed her by the back leg. I barely had her. I folded up the backseats of my truck and drove her home." When they got to Bolyard's Joppa Road home, she slipped out to quickly empty a stall in the horse barn to make a space for the goat. She returned to find an empty backseat and had a heart-stopping moment before spotting her atop the center console "gazing out like she was on top of a mountain." "She is so sweet and so very loving," she said. "I gave her some hay and water and tucked her in and told my kids not to open the barn for any reason because goats are tricky little animals." The Hrehociks met Bolyard at her house after work and picked up their escapee. Nobody thought she'd be found again. The area is thick with coyotes and she's just a baby. "She's the biggest sweetheart I've ever met. She had to be absolutely terrified," Charlotte said. By the time she posted on Facebook that night that she was back home, more than 500 people chimed in. It seemed all of Vermilion wanted to know what happened to the little kid on the lam(b). "Neighbors used to help neighbors but the world has changed so much to 'I don't want to get involved. I'm going to turn my head the other way.' And this makes me smile. This tells me there is still compassion in the world." Her adventure earned her a new name. She was Levora before, but now she has been christened "Kukini" — Hawaiian for "runner." "I just can't believe people in a community would care so much about the way we were feeling because we were heartbroken about it, but to give the support and the effort to even read it and be compassionate about it, it just puts a smile on my face." Contact Rini Jeffers@rinijeffersauthorworks, Facebook.com/RiniJeffers, follow @RiniJeffers on Twitter and rinijeffers@gmail.com.