A 9-year-old California girl bought a baby goat at auction from a county fair, with the expectation she would raise it to be returned and slaughtered. When the time came, though, she decided to keep it and named it Cedar. In response, Shasta County Fair:
• Refused, even when offered the full value of the meat
• Threatened her, 9-year-old girl, with criminal charges of grand theft
• Sent sheriff's deputies more than 500 miles at significant taxpayer expense to seize the goat.
Her family is now suing, claiming that they'd bought the animal and the fair had no right to confiscate it.
In June, when it was time to sell Cedar at a local fair livestock auction, she was "sobbing in his pen beside him", the lawsuit states. "[The girl] and Cedar bonded, just as [she] would have bonded with a puppy. She loved him as a family pet," according to the lawsuit. … Long offered to "pay back" the fair for the loss of Cedar's income, but the fair association ordered her to return the goat and said she would face charges of grand theft if she failed to do so, according to the complaint. She contacted Dahle's office to explain the situation and representatives for the lawmaker said they would "resist her efforts to save Cedar from slaughter". She also appealed to the fair association.
The situation has little to do with the goat or the value of the meat. It's all about teaching the girl a lesson about life, wrapped in a lesson about the law. I hope she gets to teach them one in return.
Also, this could be the first act of an A24 movie that ends with the Shasta County Fair administrators being transmigrated into the bodies of lambs at Shasta County Fair, ready to be fed to Republican state senators.
