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HELENA, Mont. - Two young goats that wandered onto the thin ledge of a railroad bridge and spent two days high above a highway were hungry but safe when they were plucked to safety with a towering crane.
The rescue occurred Wednesday 60 feet (18 metres) above a little-trafficked rural roadway in southern Montana after a caller told the Rimrock Humane Society the goats were stranded on the 6-inch (15-centimetre) ledge.
The young female animals weighing about 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) mostly stayed on the angled ledge, even though there was a wider surface area on a pillar just a few feet (a meter) away.
"The whole time, we thought they were going to fall off," said Sandy Church, humane society president. "These guys are just babies."
Church said it wasn't clear how the nimble-footed animals got into the predicament, but she speculated they wandered onto the ledge at night then froze after the sun rose and they discovered where they were.
The goats sometimes stepped to the pillar to urinate then returned to the narrower ledge, where they tried to rest their tired legs by tucking them under their bodies for a few seconds, she said.
Authorities were called Tuesday, when the goats were first spotted. But confusion about the location delayed the rescue until another caller alerted the humane society on Wednesday along with the Musselshell County sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office, Church and Cory Freeman, a humane society volunteer who runs the Animal Edventures Sanctuary, enlisted the help of officials at Signal Peak Energy, which operates a nearby coal mine.
Mine boss John DeMichiei volunteered mining equipment with an arm high enough to reach the stranded goats that eventually moved to the pillar.
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