They’re in a Billy Goat Huff

First she got her nannies and billies. Then she got Pacific Palisades’ goat.

And now the four-legged weed-eaters that Linda Schilcher hoped would nibble a firebreak around her Westside neighborhood are instead carving a rift right down the middle of it.

Schilcher has assembled a small herd of grazing goats that she puts to work each day clearing brush on hillsides above Pacific Palisades and Brentwood. While she looks for a permanent place to keep them, the animals sleep at night in a covered trailer in front of her home in the 600 block of Enchanted Way.

Some residents of the neighborhood, with its $1.5-million ocean-view homes, see the goats as a cute addition. But others say they are a nuisance that should be packed up and taken out of town.

Leaders of the Marquez Knolls Neighborhood Assn., representing 1,475 homes in the area, say they have tried over the last two months to persuade Los Angeles police, animal control officers and zoning inspectors to get rid of the goats. There have been complaints about the goats’ smell and their droppings.

“This is a residential area, and some people don’t want them here. I called the police and they laughed. They said, ‘Do you want us to arrest the goats? They aren’t parked illegally,’ ” said Kurt Toppel, president of the homeowners group.

“Having goats here doesn’t seem to be an infraction. But why not? It should be.”

Schilcher says association officials have warned her that if the goats aren’t gone by the end of this week, they will seek a municipal ordinance specifically prohibiting goat-keeping on city streets.

Currently, goats are banned from being raised on property not zoned for agricultural use. Permanent pens and goat sheds are not allowed on small, residential-size lots.

But they can be kept in properly registered vehicles parked on public streets, provided the animals are being humanely treated and the vehicle is moved every three days. Schilcher tows her straw-lined, water trough-equipped trailer each day to nearby canyons to graze the goats, so she meets those requirements.

Schilcher said she has tried to assure everyone that the mobile goat pen is temporary until she can find suitable open space for the animals.

She intends to use movable fencing and shelters so the goats do not have to be transported daily by vehicle.

Finding such land has been harder than expected, however. Even though property owners face tough brush-clearance requirements, none of those Schilcher has contacted have invited her goats to move in.

Toppel said some fear that Schilcher’s goats have become a permanent neighborhood fixture. He said residents are concerned that goat droppings could end up in storm drains that empty into Santa Monica Bay. Schilcher denies the possibility, saying the droppings are contained in the trailer.

For Schilcher, in her 50s, the last thing she expected when she rescued her animals from local shelters was to end up in a neighborhood catfight.

She is an internationally known scholar and expert on rural Syrian culture and agriculture who has taught at UCLA, Villanova University and the University of Arkansas.

It was at the Fayetteville, Ark., school’s King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies that Schilcher said she encountered administrative problems in the 1990s that prompted her to join in a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination, obstruction of free speech and retaliation.

The case is still in the courts, and Schilcher said stress from the dispute prompted her to rethink her career.

“I found you couldn’t get support for your work without experiencing political overtones. Everything in that field has an added dimension -- if you say Arab poetry is phenomenal, you’re ‘pro-Arab.’ You can’t get away from the damned politics,” she said.

“I thought I might want to go into dairy work, so I trained with a goat-milk farmer and I fell in love with the animals. I decided I couldn’t do Middle Eastern stuff anymore. I decided I’d rather herd goats instead.”

Schilcher adopted four abandoned goats from the East Valley Animal Shelter and a fifth from the West Los Angeles Shelter. She also adopted a young border collie mix and set out to train it to help herd her three Nubians and two Angoras.

Between excursions into the hills with her goats -- they graze daily on privately owned vacant land in Mandeville Canyon -- Schilcher works as a live-in caregiver for a Pacific Palisades woman with Alzheimer’s disease.

Schilcher hopes to expand her herd and turn their brush-clearing into a business serving hillside property owners. She said movable pens, along with a simple low-voltage fence system she owns, would allow her goats to move easily around large parcels and help landowners comply with Los Angeles fire-safety laws, which require the removal of brush within 200 feet of structures.

Property owners aren’t flocking to the goats’ trailer door, however.

Schilcher said an official of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which manages thousands of acres of open space, voiced concern that her animals would eat endangered native plants along with the unwanted weeds and brush. Schilcher said she tried to convince him that those plants would have to be removed anyway if they’re growing inside the 200-foot clearance zone.

Rorie Skei, the conservancy’s chief deputy director, said her agency would consider using the goats if Schilcher submitted a formal proposal detailing such things as animal supervision and safety, as well as environmental issues.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which uses huge swaths of hillside property for power-line corridors and reservoirs, said goat grazing might be allowed. But Schilcher could end up paying for a land-use license. Those renting DWP land for such things as parking and nursery operations pay up to $22,500 an acre per year.

“It would be a special request. But we’d look at any request coming in,” said Armando Parra, a DWP real estate associate.

The Los Angeles Fire Department sends professional brush-clearance crews -- and then seeks reimbursement from property owners -- to parcels that are not properly cleared.

“Goats are used elsewhere for brush clearance, but we haven’t used them,” said Fire Capt. Bob Mihlhauser. “There are some underlying problems: Would they damage hillsides and eat all the foliage, including endangered species? She needs to do environmental studies.”

Toppel, head of the homeowners group, agreed that brush clearance is a major issue in Pacific Palisades. He said he felt “like an ogre” calling police and animal control officers about the goats parked on Enchanted Way.

“They are not noisy; they haven’t bleated. They are very content. They are very harmless, very friendly. There’s no abuse involved. They get a lot of petting and are perfectly happy. They seem very content with their status,” said Toppel, a retired business consultant who co-chairs Pacific Palisades’ community council and was citizen of the year in 1998.

Toppel, who discussed the goat dispute with other community council members last week, acknowledged that enactment of a special city ordinance may be difficult to achieve. Aides to L.A. City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who represents Pacific Palisades, said such a measure has not yet been introduced.

As for Schilcher, she hopes to overcome opposition as she searches for new accommodations for her goats.

She said she was shaken when she recently found a cigarette butt that apparently had been tossed into the trailer’s straw bed.

On the advice of animal control officers, she has posted a sign on the trailer that explains the goats’ purpose and assures that they are not being abused.

In the meantime, she is looking for a tiny buggy to borrow over the Labor Day holiday. Her neighborhood is holding a block party, and she hopes she’ll be able to give children free goat rides.

Maybe, Schilcher hopes, that will help her stop butting heads with some of her neighbors.