MISQUAH — A goat reported at large along County Road 6 occupied the Sheriff’s substation for the better part of Tuesday afternoon before resolving the matter itself, returning home of its own accord before deputies could establish ownership, motive, or, as Deputy Vang noted, “any of the things you’d want to establish about a goat.”

The animal was sighted by several motorists standing in the ditch with what witnesses described as “complete composure,” regarding traffic with the flat, unbothered expression goats reserve for human affairs. Reports placed it variously near the Hagen line, near the old Co-op creamery road, and “walking like it had somewhere to be,” a detail that complicated the search, the substation having no missing-goat reports on file to match it against.

By the time Deputy Vang reached the area, the goat had departed. A subsequent and informal canvass of nearby farms produced no one willing to claim it and two people willing to speculate, one suggesting it belonged to a hobby operation toward Pinedale and the other suggesting it was “probably just passing through,” a theory Vang declined to rule out. “I’ve stopped being surprised by what passes through,” he said.

The goat is presumed to have returned wherever it came from, no farm having since reported one short. The substation closed the matter as resolved, Vang noting that it was “the rare call that solves itself, which I appreciate, because there is no procedure in the manual for a goat, and I checked.” Residents who recognize the animal are asked to contact no one in particular, the case being, in the deputy’s words, “about as closed as a goat ever gets.”