Spanish Goats

A group of excited Frenchmen called at the office of the French Administrator of Tangier. Loudest was the owner of Tangier's only French cinema. He was the victim of a political plot, he cried. Spanish citizens of Tangier were planning an anti-French boycott.

"My theatre, M. I'Admimstrateur is right next to the Spanish cinema," said he. "Between us is an unused courtyard. Every night when the theatre is closed I take the poster boards down from in front of the theatre and store them in this courtyard. This Spanish type, he does the same thing with his posters. Very well, morning after morning I have found the French posters torn to shreds, the Spanish posters untouched. . . ."

More trivial things than torn theatre posters have caused serious riots in Tangier. Diagonally across the strait from British-owned Gibraltar, Tangier is nominally under the rule of boyish Sidi Mohammed, Sultan of Morocco. Actually it is ruled by an unwieldy international board composed of a French administrator with Spanish, British and Italian assistants. International feeling is high; Administrator Paul Alberge sent detectives to watch the alley between the French and Spanish cinemas.

All night the detectives watched, muffled in thick cloaks against the chill African night. At dawn a herd of goats ambled down the street, led by a young Spanish boy blowing on a cowhorn. The detectives craned their stiff necks. At each doorway where an empty milk can was standing the goatherd stopped, milked a complacent nanny to the requisite amount, then passed on. Meanwhile the other goats foraged busily. The surprised detectives saw numbers of them make for the alley where stood the French and Spanish cinema billboards, sniff the Spanish posters suspiciously, then turn to the French and pulling the posters from the boards with sharp teeth, eat them with evident relish.

Within a few hours the story of the poster-eating Spanish goats was all over Tangier. Feeling was higher than ever, rumors were thick: The goatherd was a Spanish spy. . . . The goats were Spanish spies. . . . They were trained to eat nothing but French posters. More cautiously Administrator Alberge continued his investigations. Dramatically he announced the solution. It was not the posters but the paste with which they were posted that attracted the goats. The Spanish paste was bitter, unpalatable. The French paste smelt and tasted of honey. The French cinema proprietor added a few drops of oil of bitter almonds to his paste.