Good Samaritans rescue baby goat stranded on West Oahu cliff for 4 days

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – After four harrowing days, a baby goat that was stuck all alone on a cliff in West Oahu is finally safe.
A Waianae resident first spotted the small, white goat Monday, but the Honolulu Fire Department, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, and Hawaiian Humane Society all said they couldn’t rescue it.
Just as hope began to fade, the power of social media stepped in.
Kailua resident Govinda Hansen said her husband, Ben, alerted her to the goat’s predicament.
“He saw the Hawaii News Now Instagram post, and he’s like, look, there’s a goat. Looks like he’s stuck. So he showed it to me and I’m a sucker for baby animals, or animals in general. So I was like, we need to go get this goat,” Hansen said.
She wasn’t the only one. People rallied in our comments, including Travis Woo and Caleb Morrison.
Morrison said, “A swarm of people sending me the post on Hawaii News Now, like, ‘Go save this goat, Caleb!’”
Hansen said, “Caleb also had climbing gear, so I was like, ‘We can do it! Let’s go get him!”
So off they went, a band of strangers gathering by the cliffs near Waianae Coast Comprehensive Center.
When they got there, the goat was in the same spot.
“I was down the cliff under the goat, waiting to see if he jumped,” said Hansen.
“The goat started to kind of panic as we approached, so we just kind of hung back,” said Morrison, “slowly inching forward and using, like a team strategy of kind of corralling the goat.”
The avid hikers carefully made their way up the steep terrain.
“We weren’t exactly sure how big of a cliffside it was,” Morrison said, “and we wanted to get in there as quick as possible, just because it had been there already for four days. It seemed already super skittish. You know, it’s a wild animal.”
Once they were within the goat’s reach, they used an apple and a drone to distract it.
“He just kind of slowly put out the apple and just let him sit there,” Morrison said.
When the goat ventured closer, “he just bear-hugged the little guy all the way down the mountainside,” Morrison said.
It took 45 minutes to bring the baby goat down.
“I was very relieved that we got him safely,” Hansen said. “We named him Bala. Bala means white. He’s beautiful.”
Bala is now at Aloha Animal Sanctuary, safe at last. He was also hungry and immediately drank an entire bottle of milk.
“He’s happy,” Hansen said. “We put him down on grass and he just like chilled there. He seems to be doing good.”
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