It can take the wisdom of Solomon...

It can take the wisdom of Solomon to handle some of the disputes that come before local city councils.

Take, for instance, the one in Rancho Palos Verdes about a 4-month-old, long-eared Nubian goat who became a sort of “scapegoat” for problems that have developed over the years between Valsiliki Buegel, a native of Greece with a fondness for farm animals, and several neighbors on Heroic Drive.

When the goat moved in to the Buegel yard, some of the neighbors decided they needed the counsel of wiser heads; there had been arguments and disagreements on Heroic Drive for long enough. So they took the gripe about the goat to City Hall.

First, the city sent out Associate Planner Greg Fuz to inspect the gender of the young goat. City codes prohibit keeping a weaned, male goat on residential property, but when Fuz examined the goat and found it was a neutered male, he wasn’t sure the code applied.

The City Council wasn’t sure either, but concluded after some deliberation Wednesday night that neutered or not a male was a male was a male.

They unanimously declared the goat a nuisance and ordered it banished by next Friday from Buegel’s back yard.

It seems billy goats emit a far more offensive odor than their sterile brothers, but to next-door neighbor Steve McNamara, the light-brown gelded goat was still intolerable.

“It’s the noise, the smell, the reduction of the inherent value of property,” McNamara told the council. “People buy here expecting to have a safe, quiet property. Not to live in a zoo.”

McNamara said the young goat continually bleated, but the cacophony that resulted at 5 a.m. when it awakened Buegel’s ducks, roosters and chickens was most disturbing.

Buegel pleaded with the council to allow her to keep her pet, which she said reminded her of her homeland.

But although Buegel’s fowl can stay, the goat has got to go.