The Andes Goat Boy

He was even given a “real” name: Daniel.

But wherever you look, the information on the goat boy is sparse and mostly the same. He was an absolute anomaly of which we know so little. There’s just the one photo. He doesn’t even have a Wiki page of his own.

He was found in 1990, not even the 19th century so you’d think in this electronic age there’d be more info on Goat Boy. But here’s about all you get anywhere:

A boy of 12 was found in the mountains of Peru living amongst goats in 1990. He supposedly survived eight years in the wild by drinking the animals’ milk and eating roots and berries. His hands and feet had become hardened, much like hooves, from time spent walking on all fours. 

A team from Kansas University and Kansas State University investigated The Andes Goat Boy, who they named Daniel, and declared that while his human language skills were almost non-existent, he could in fact communicate with the goats he called family.

Published in Dawn, Young World April 8th, 2017

That’s about all you get on Goat Boy.

I don’t know how long he lived or if he’s still alive. If he is alive, I guess that’d make him Goat Man now. I don’t know if he learned a language or manners or to eat with utensils or wear shoes. Was he institutionalized? If so, did he prefer life with the goats to life with us fools who confined him and, presumably, tried to make him like us?

Not by choice but by nature, Goat Boy became more goat than human. It had become his nature. But we can’t let him be what nature made him. We need to make him into one of us, for we know what’s best.

They say that the capacity for language is something innate. But can we lose it? Did Goat Boy lose it, and, with it, a significant part of his humanity? Was he born with a sense of morality? Was it overridden with a goat’s morality? These all beg the question: what all makes us human? The DNA? The biology? The mechanical functions? A signature? The soul?

Did they poke and prod at your humanity, Goat Boy, trying to goad it out? Did they beckon it forth with our greatest works? Michelangelo and Plato? The Great Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza? Beethoven and God?

And if that didn’t work did they try smoking it out with candy or booze or fashionable jeans or porno?

What if, after all that provocation and temptation, you were still a goat?

Did they give up and release Goat Boy back to the mountains where maybe he prospered? And maybe those scientists in those Kansas universities keep tabs on him. But they don’t want us to know how well Goat Boy’s doing without us and as a goat. That’s why you can’t find anything about him presently.

Or maybe he died because he couldn’t handle the stress of not being a goat. Of living in the confines of a cell or apartment or a suburban 4 bedroom/2.5 bath home instead of the mountains. If so, they wouldn’t want us to know that either.

Or maybe, Goat Boy, you’ve grown up to become a salesman or a loan officer or an undertaker or a cop. You could be anything. Maybe you have a wife and children and don’t want to be reminded of your feral past. Maybe that’s why we know nothing about your current condition, because you keep it hidden.

I hope they released you, Goat Boy, to be what you are, even to love another goat rather than a woman. Is that blasphemous? Would a female goat perceive you as her male equivalent or something else? These are what I want to know.

Anyway, if you’re still with us, Goat Boy, I hope you are well and I wish you blessings, even if you’re naked and living on roots and loving another goat. I want you to be what you are but, if we were to meet, I’d also wish you could do more than bleat, cause I’d want to know how if feels to love and/or live like you do. But that would be wishing you to be something that you aren’t. That would be selfish so I’d try to let it go.

I’m feeling a bit sad today, Goat Boy. It feels a bit weird and I hope it’s not insulting to call you Goat Boy. But that’s what I’ll call you cause Daniel seems to be what we want you to be. I wish I knew more about you. Knowing might or might not make me feel better but I guess I’ll never know. Oh, well.

Peace.