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Sacred teachings of the Gully Llama

by George Custer | Oct 25, 2024 | Featured Sidebar

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The Gully Llama watches as a pair of forlorn local golfers trudge sadly down the goose poop-strewn hellscape of the 13th fairway at East Morescoreland, a public course in Southeast Portland, Ore.

Left foreleg straight, keep your head down – or up, if you’re a llama – and don’t think about the election. You’ll shank one for sure if you do.

ERIC MORTENSON Oct 24 || SUBSTACK || ABOUT HALF SHOT

It was news here when the neighborhood golf course brought in a herd of goats and a guard llama — Dewey, is his name — to clean out a ravine that cuts across the most treacherous hole on the course, which is the 13th (naturally).

Goats will eat anything and llamas apparently aren’t picky either. They spent about three-and-a-half weeks at the golf course, eating blackberry canes, ivy and other invasive or crap vegetation choking the gully, which runs down to a creek. They were penned in with a portable electric fence set up by the goat rental company, so there wasn’t much chance they’d wander. Dewey, the llama, was there to chase off coyotes, which also live on the golf course. Big stomper, the llama, as Bill Murray might say. (Obligatory “Caddyshack” movie reference.)

None of this has anything to do with the upcoming presidential election, which a certain vile buffoon has a chance of winning. I’ve donated, ranted online and will vote early and often, as they say, for Kamala Harris, but that’s about all I can do. Oregon is a True Blue state in the Electoral College sense of things, but we don’t have much political clout. Not a big hitter like the llama.

So I’d rather talk about Dewey and the goats. They are owned by a family company based just outside McMinnville, Ore., called Go Goat Oregon, which has 22 goats and two llamas and rents them for brush clearing work. The chewing crew is a side job for company owner Keara Broadhead, an online school teacher, and her husband and kids. She said the work at Eastmoreland Golf Course, which opened in 1918 and is Oregon’s second oldest after Gearharts Golf Links on the coast, was their first booking at a golf course. Usually they get hired to clean up lots or to chew firebreaks around residences by eating blackberries, poison oak, ivy and what have you.

Dewey, the llama, with a couple of his goat buds and posing for a portrait during the work at Eastmoreland. Owner Keara Broadhead called the goats “big personalities in little bodies,” and said Dewey and fellow guard llama, Rain, dote on them. If a coyote or dog attacked the goats, the llamas would attempt to corner it and stomp it. ”Most canines have the sense, if they’re being chased by a llama, to get out of there,” Broadhead said.

Would the llamas corner a politician and stomp it if it tried to attack democracy? Experts say there is no way to know. And we are not here to talk politics, although we are pro-stomping. Keep your head down and swing easy.

There was quite a bit of local media coverage in late September when Dewey and 10 of the goats arrived at East Morescoreland, as the grizzled veterans of the fabled Portland Seniors Tour call the course.

The gully bisecting the 13th fairway has steep sides. Getting machinery in there to clear it would be hazardous. And spraying Glyphosate or some other weed killer that would be washed down into the creek is a no-go on public land in Portland. So bring on Dewey and the Goats.

It was a cute story, but of course the media accounts missed the true significance.

The 13th is the nemesis of my golf persona, sweet swinging Eric Irons, who as you know dominates his hapless foes on the Seniors Tour. It’s a par 5, llama-leg left. Not long, but treacherous: 435 yards from the Whites, which the PST plays from.

The tee shot is uphill with a bend to the left, and big hitters have to be careful they don’t fly the ball into the street or, worse, into the gully.

A properly cautious drive puts you on the flat, but your next shot has to sail across the ravine, which seems a mile wide. Your mind curdles, of course, and you skitter your ball deep down into the blackberry bushes, never to be seen again. I must have hit into that damn thing a dozen times over the years. The best Irons has ever scored on the 13th was a bogey 6, and that felt like a triumph for the ages, kind of like how it will feel when Kamala crushes trump. Hopefully.

Anyway, when the Gully Llama and his goats set to work, they cleared and uncovered all those long lost Titleists and Callaways and Noodles and Top Flites and Wilsons and on and on.

“There were so many,” marveled Broadhead, the goat company owner. “Definitely more than dozens. At least a hundred that I saw.”

With the ground cleared, maybe golfers will elect to venture into the gully and courageously hack out of it rather than drop another ball and take a penalty stroke. There’s a political metaphor in there struggling to get out. Teed up for you. Sitting upon a fluffy lie. The Gully Llama wishes you well on your journey to understanding, or whatever.

Pacific Northwest writer who worked 37 wondrous years as a reporter at Oregon newspapers. I write about Oregon, family, journalism, politics, pets, bad golf, gardening, cooking and running. @ericmortenson

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George Custer lives in Oakridge with his wife Sayre. George is a former smokejumper from his hometown of Cave Junction, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. and ran a construction company in Southern California. George assumed the volunteer duties as the Editor of the Highway 58 Herald in 2022. He loves riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, building all things wood, and playing drums on the weekends in his office.

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