No, no, no, you don’t give animals away as gifts. Every year at Christmas time – and at Easter for the special case of rabbits in the nest – the urgent appeal from animal protection associations can be heard. With absolutely understandable arguments: An animal is a living being and not a commodity, that means responsibility, you don’t just decide that spontaneously, but in the best case, carefully considered and well-informed.
What’s even more remarkable is what free animals are currently on offer. Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi offers 20,000 elephants to move to Germany in a newspaper interview. And goats are available on the Italian island of Alicudi. It is said that you can adopt them instead of a street dog or a stray cat. An offer that will hit the hearts of animal-loving travelers to Italy and Italophile animal lovers.
Alicudi is one of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, a pretty island far away from the main tourist flows. Circular, just five square kilometers in size, with a 600 meter high extinct volcano in the middle, a mountain in the middle of the sea, on the slopes of which heather grows in large bushes. There are no roads, and logically no cars either, steep stairs lead to the houses of the approximately 100 island residents.
There are significantly more goats, 600 in fact. And that’s exactly the problem. There are too many, complains Riccardo Gullo, the mayor: They eat their way through the vegetable gardens, damage water tanks and dry stone walls. And they aren’t really at home on the island anyway: they were only introduced 20 years ago, and a few escaped from their owners – the beginning of the now unwanted wild goat population.
That’s why you want to get rid of them and announced this in a highly official announcement. Anyone who is interested can contact us by email. A fee of 16 euros is charged for this, the animals themselves are available free of charge, but not for free: you have to catch them and take them away from the island yourself – and at this point at the latest it becomes clear that the offer is probably less aimed at holidaymakers who are starving Want to give street animals a new happy home than those who often grab goats by the horns because of their job. Although: Catching a goat with a lasso on vacation, shipping it in a rowing boat and taking the strong-smelling animal home with you in the new van would be a truly unforgettable experience.
The Aeolian Islands are worth a trip even without free goats. Not only, but also when it comes to souvenirs. The capers from there are considered the best in the world. And they are much easier to catch and transport than horned even-toed ungulates.
The author prefers to travel with small hand luggage. So you shouldn’t expect any souvenirs from her. And certainly not goats.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (illustration))