When the storm sirens went off in Enid, Oklahoma, the Sloat family did what you’re supposed to do. They ran for the cellar.
What they couldn’t have predicted was that getting out would be the hard part.
An EF4 tornado ripped through their neighborhood on May 5th, leveling their home and collapsing heavy debris directly over their cellar door. They were alive, but they were stuck. Glass had shattered around them. They could hear bricks falling above. The door had dented inward.
And their two pet goats, Percy and Penny, were nowhere to be seen. The small shelter that housed the goats had vanished. Nothing left but a concrete slab.
“These are goats that our whole family raised,” Mary Sloat said. Her daughter had even shown one of them at fairs. In the dark, the family feared the worst.
Then, faintly, they heard something.
Goats.
“My daughter and I could have sworn that we heard goat noises,” Mary recalled. “And I thought, there’s no way.”
But there was a way. Percy and Penny had survived the tornado, and in what can only be described as an act of pure animal instinct, they had climbed right on top of the debris pile, directly above where their family was trapped.
When rescuers arrived and came around the back of the house, they spotted the goats standing on the mound of bricks. It didn’t take long to put it together. That’s probably where the cellar was.
They were right. The family was pulled to safety.
It’s the kind of story that sounds made up, and yet here we are.
Mary Sloat says that from now on, when Percy and Penny are being ornery, headbutting her, or nibbling her fingers, she’s going to try to remember this moment. The day her goats were more than pets. They were a signal. A beacon. A couple of stubborn, wonderful animals who stayed right where their family needed them most.
“I don’t know of anybody else who has a goat story like this,” she said.
Neither do we, Mary. Neither do we.
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