You might say that Ray the goat no longer has a leg up on the other 12 goats who live at the 55-acre Awbury Arboretum in Germantown, one block from the border with Mt. Airy, but when it comes to resilience and personality, he is still standing tall.

It has been one year since Ray’s right rear leg was amputated because of a femur broken in three parts. No one knows exactly how it happened, although it may have been a result of jumping from a high elevation, which goats often do instinctively for survival and safety.

“It was last Mother’s Day when we noticed him limping,” said volunteer Angel Hogan, “but none of us imagined we were standing at the edge of such a long road. Ray is our gentle giant: sweet, steady, soulful and a little goofy. Learning that his femur was shattered beyond repair felt like a heart-punch.

“When the vets ultimately told us amputation was his safest option, we chose to fight for him. We thought if he’s still bright-eyed and willing, so are we. In those first weeks after surgery, we built our days around his healing. We created ‘Ray care’ shifts, made him a private stall and kept him within sight and sound of his herd. Goats can ostracize the injured, and we worried about how he’d manage. Standing was painful for him. Some days he didn’t want to rise at all. Those were the days I sat on the straw beside him and read poetry to him out loud.”

Ray, age 8, is a part of the Philly Goat Project (PGP), started in 2018, which provides nature-based programming, wellness and community engagement while partnering with their herd of friendly goats, who were obtained from area farms. On any given day, you might see groups of children from local schools thrilled to meet the goats (admission to the arboretum is free) in their two-acre fenced-in home, and the goats also travel to area schools to meet and interact with children. You might say the goats are “kid-napped.”

“On a farm, Ray would have probably been euthanized because it was so expensive to treat him,” Leslie Jackson (she wears a t-shirt reading “We Goat Hard”), who is in charge of volunteers (of whom there are 185), told us last week. “We call him Resilient Ray. He won’t give up. [Volunteers] Angel Hogan and Ali Badler are writing a children’s book about him.”

Ray came from Some Amazing Acres, a farm in Pottstown. His hospital bill was about $10,000. PGP had to do a lot of fundraising for the hospital bill, a wheelchair and therapy, which was twice a day and is now three times a week. A goat’s life expectancy is 10 to 15 years, very similar to dogs.

Karen Krivit (aka “Goat Mom”), founder of PGP, oversees all programming and is a licensed social worker with over 30 years of experience as well as a public health consultant, retired triathlete and mosaic artist. “Ray is my favorite goat,” she said, “because he loves me unconditionally and makes it easy to reciprocate. Also I love whom he is named after.”

Ray is named for Raymond Pace Alexander (1898-1974), a longtime resident of Germantown who was a civil rights leader, lawyer, politician, the first Black judge appointed to the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas and the first Black graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in the 1920s.

“Grief is a strange companion: heavy, quiet, unpredictable yet always present,” Hogan said. “My mom died not long before Ray was hurt. Growing up on a farm, animals were my first teachers in resilience, and volunteering with PGP helped me feel close to my mom again. As I cleaned Ray’s pressure sores, gave him medicine and coaxed him gently onto three legs, I realized we were both relearning how to stand after loss.”

Volunteers at PGP and Awbury Arboretum get credit from Weavers Way for their volunteer hours, as does the trash pickup team. PGP workers we spoke to would like to publicly thank Dr. Christina L. Fuoco, a veterinarian with Whole Animal Gym (WAG); Casey Buckley, physical therapist from WP Creative Pets, and the Hamilton Family Trust, which has provided a generous grant for PGP to take goats to schools.

“And the vehicle we have is a Dodge Ram, believe it or not,” Jackson said. “We have named it Van Goat. And since Ray loves roses, we get a big bag of rose petals for him from Produce Junction for just $1. We have people in the area who come every day. A person can also adopt a goat and get a nice photo and letter every month.”

For more information, visit phillygoatproject.org. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.