Nearly 99% of the comments were positive (“This is crazy!” “Hysterical!”), but as everyone knows, there are always some who feel their life’s duty is to criticize others.
In early July this year, a video showing goats dancing on the roof of a cross-border SUV SUV was published online, with millions of viewers expressing amazement, but some also criticized the photographer: why didn’t he stop the goats from dancing on someone else’s roof!
Michael Ryno set out around 4 a.m., driving for an hour and a half to Mount Evans, arriving half an hour before sunrise. At that time, there was no plan to photograph goats on his shooting schedule. His goal was to capture the thousand-year-old pine trees, with various colors flowing through their twisted branches at sunrise. Mr. Ryno, a 62-year-old professional photographer and chairman of the Colorado Professional Photographers Association, effortlessly captured this magical sight.
The idea to photograph the goats came later. But these goat photos brought the photographer unexpected things: exposure and fame.
Mr. Ryno drove to the summit of Mount Evans at an altitude of 14,000 feet. As he approached the summit, he stopped. There he saw a Subaru with a “GLAMP” (charming camping) license plate parked in the rugged and uneven parking lot on the side of the road, which had no designated parking spots.
“When I arrived there, I saw two baby goats playing in front of the car, between me and the car,” he told The Epoch Times, speculating they may only be a few months old. He added that these two baby goats were with two adult goats, “they went around the car, which is quite common in that area.”
He told the newspaper that he didn’t know the car or the owner. When he saw the goats standing on the Subaru roof, he grabbed his phone and captured them prancing and playing on it, which was obviously different from their usual hard rocky terrain. “Obviously, they are used to walking on hard ground,” Mr. Ryno said. “They’re used to walking on rocks.”
The roof of the SUV had a black Yakima storage box where the agile hoofed goats seemed to not slip, easily leaping and “dancing” on the plastic shell, the photographer said.
“At the time, I thought I would publish this video in a series of short clips on Instagram,” he said, “but I didn’t expect it to attract so much attention.”
Like other goat short videos, this clip quickly went viral. After its release, it garnered 2.2 million views, 90,000 likes, and over 2000 comments. Mr. Ryno used to be a corporate banker, and photography was his dream job after retirement. He has been appearing frequently in local news media, and even discussed the goat incident live on television that day.
However, all this attention also sparked criticism.
“Only a few people,” he said, “questioned why I didn’t chase the goats off the car.”
He insisted he had his reasons.
“Ordinarily, with wild animals, you shouldn’t interfere, chase, or try to confront them. Whether it’s bears, goats, or anything else, you shouldn’t attempt to disrupt them doing what comes naturally unless an animal is injured or in a similar situation,” he said.
Mr. Ryno said he contacted other professional wildlife photographers, and they told him he did the “absolutely right thing.”
“Even if it was my car, I would do the same. Because there were other baby goats around at the time,” he said.
Mr. Ryno was even able to contact the car owner, Mindy Williford, an avid outdoor sports enthusiast with 300 extreme hiking experiences (“Her camping is not charming,” Mr. Ryno said). Someone recognized her license plate from the video and informed her of the goat dancing scene through Instagram. Although by the time she checked it, the chaos was already over, she did capture the hoofprints left on her car and shared it with excitement on Instagram.
Mindy Williford later received an email from Mr. Ryno, finally understanding the full story of the event.
The photographer claimed that no damage was done. Ms. Williford easily washed off the goat prints covering her car, leaving no dents.
Was she upset?
“Not at all,” Mr. Ryno said. “Her comment was, ‘Oh, I wish I could have seen it at the time.'”