Bill The Goat - The Kidnappings of Bill

The Kidnappings of Bill

The first recorded kidnapping of Bill in modern times was accomplished one week before the Army-Navy football game in the fall of 1953. A group of cadets from the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point snuck onto the Annapolis grounds with the help of a West Point exchange student who was living at the Naval Academy. After locating the goat behind the stadium, the cadets stashed it in the backseat of a convertible; however, their cover was blown when they stopped at a gas station and the goat's horns shredded the convertible top. The cadets successfully made it back to the USMA and presented the goat to the entire Corps at a raucous dinnertime pep rally; however, many Navy midshipmen refused to go to classes until Bill was returned. After the goat's return was ordered by officials from West Point (as well as President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself, a USMA graduate), the Army cadets staged a mass protest which was posted on the front page of several New York papers as "Goat Rebellion at West Point." The Army football team went on to defeat Navy 20-7.

The Air Force joined in soon after, via a raid by three United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) cadets a month prior to the first Air Force/Navy football game in 1960. Bill was flown to the AFA in the bomb bay of an Air Force B-26, where he resided on a farm until Naval Intelligence tracked him to Colorado. The superintendent of the USAFA learned of the mission through intimidation of the Cadet Wing, and forced the return of Bill to Annapolis. The event was reported by several national media outlets, including Life, at the time.

During the height of a heated in-state rivalry with Maryland, the goat was stolen by Maryland students. This happened shortly before the controversial 1964 match, where actions on the field caused the suspension of the series for 40 years.

On November 5, 1995, a month before the Army-Navy football game, a group of seniors from the USMA staged a pre-dawn raid on the Naval Academy Dairy Farm in Gambrills, Maryland and kidnapped Bill the Goat XXVI, XXVIII and XXIX. The Pentagon was notified, and the three goats were returned under a policy forged by flag officers of the Army and Navy that stipulates that the "kidnapping of cadets, midshipmen or mascots will not be tolerated".

However, the truce was broken in 2002, when Army cadets kidnapped the Navy mascot from the Dairy Farm during a Veterans Day weekend, wearing Grateful Dead T-shirts as a disguise. After residing in a Pennsylvania farm, the Angora goat was returned.

On November 17, 2007 cadets from the USMA raided the Naval Academy Dairy Farm and kidnapped Bill XXXII, Bill XXXIII and Bill XXXIV prior to an upcoming Army–Navy football game. The operation was named "Operation Good Shepherd" according to a Naval Academy spokesman. The goatnappers created a video showing the planning and actually goatnapping, and then posted it on YouTube.

On November 24, 2012, a passerby spotted an Angora goat tied up near the Pentagon in a median at an intersection on Army Navy Drive in Arlington County, Virginia. Representatives of the Animal Welfare League of Arlington rescued the ruminant and took it to the League's animal shelter. Calls were then placed to law enforcement officials in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, who notified the caprine's presumptive owners that their property had been found and needed a ride back home. The manager of Maryland Sunrise Farm (the successor to the Naval Academy Dairy Farm), where Bill XXXVIII and Bill XXXIV usually resided, then claimed and retrieved the beast, which was in good condition, but did not know which Bill was absent from the farm. A Navy spokeswoman said, “At this time, we are unaware of who may have taken the goat, but it could be related to the Army-Navy game Dec. 8.” A spokesman for the USMA stated that he had "no official knowledge" of any theft of a goat. No charges were filed because it was unclear as to who had tied and abandoned the animal in the median.