She survived on her own for over a year.
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Last Christmas, a couple from Evergreen, Colorado, came back to find something unexpected waiting on their property — not a bear, not a bobcat, but a tiny white goat blinking back at them from their trail camera footage.
Charles Ray and Ginger Dodson had grown accustomed to wildlife wandering through their backyard. Mountain lions, bobcats, and bears were practically neighbors. But a lone miniature goat? That was something else entirely.
“At first, we figured she belonged to someone nearby and would wander back on her own,” Ginger recalled to The Dodo. “So we let it go — but the longer she stayed, the harder it got to ignore her. She’d just stand there watching us.”
Weeks passed with no sign of an owner. Charles made calls to animal control, but no one could step in. Meanwhile, Ginger’s concern grew — the wilderness around Evergreen isn’t exactly forgiving for a small domesticated animal.
“You try to relax in the hot tub and all you can think is, ‘That goat is not going to make it through the night,'” she laughed. “It really kills the whole zen experience.”
Unwilling to do nothing, the couple contacted Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary and hatched a rescue plan. As it turned out, locals had been spotting the mysterious little goat drifting through the mountain community since 2024 — a white blur among boulders, a set of small horns silhouetted against a ridge — for well over a year.
The sightings had even sparked curiosity in a neighborhood Facebook group, where someone asked whether mountain goats lived in the area. They do, but native Rocky Mountain goats are large, heavy-coated animals with distinctive black horns — nothing like the petite creature that had captured everyone’s attention.
Following Broken Shovels’ advice, Charles and Ginger began building trust with the goat using animal crackers and carrots, leaving treats inside a large dog pen set up in a neighbor’s yard.
“We started talking to her, spending time with her,” Ginger said. “We were making friends.”
Their window to act came in late January, just ahead of an incoming winter storm. The couple placed a bowl of carrots and apples inside the pen and waited. When the goat stepped in to eat, Ginger pulled a rope attached to the door and it swung shut.
“She immediately threw herself at the door,” Ginger said. “She was furious.” But she was finally safe.
The Broken Shovels team came to transport her to their facility, where they named her Griselda and identified her as a Nigerian dwarf-pygmy goat mix. Despite her months alone in the mountains, she arrived in remarkably good shape.
“Other than what appeared to be mild frostbite on her nose, she looked great,” said Andrea Davis, the sanctuary’s director. “Her hooves were practically perfect — worn smooth from all that time on the rocks.”
The team believes Griselda was likely abandoned after living in a domestic setting, which makes her extended solo survival all the more extraordinary.
“She had to be incredibly sharp and adaptable to have lasted out there on her own for so long,” Davis said.
It didn’t take long for Griselda’s true personality to emerge once she was safe and surrounded by people.
“Within days she completely opened up,” Davis said. “She became loud, expressive, and totally demanding in the best way. She’s a total extrovert — being alone out there must have been genuinely painful for her.”
Griselda has since been rehomed at Sticker Weed Farm, a private animal sanctuary, where she’s already busy making friends — mostly other goats.
Still, Charles and Ginger find themselves thinking about the spirited little animal who used to watch them from the yard.
“She was just a beautiful goat,” Charles said. “We still miss seeing her out there.”