Amidst all the gloom and doom of the modern world came a quaint and uplifting story this week about goats or more particularly invasive plant-eating goats.

Evidently some canny farmers in the USA have discovered that goats have a taste for some of the most persistent and damaging invasive plant species on the American continent such as poison ivy, phragmites (a kind of reed) and even kudzu, the ultra-prolific and fast-growing “vine that ate the South”.

In the case of kudzu, the US authorities have been fighting a losing battle for over a hundred years and the chemical treatment and digging up of the land in attempts to remove kudzu have probably caused more harm than good. The discovery that goats enjoy eating it is therefore manna from heaven for both man and goat. No kidding!

Anyway, the point is this. How reassuring and comforting to be reminded once again that in spite of all our wonderful scientific breakthroughs, inventions and discoveries we are perhaps not as clever as we think we are and Mother Nature still knows best!