The Midnight Delivery Driver Who Brought A Live Goat
Working the night shift in downtown Chicago is a peculiar experience. The city, which usually feels like a living, breathing beast during the day, transforms into something quieter and a bit more ominous once the sun goes down. I am a night shift security guard at a mid-sized office building, and my world usually consists of flickering fluorescent lights, the hum of the HVAC system, and endless cups of lukewarm, bitter coffee that I buy from the vending machine in the lobby. It was 2:00 AM on a day, the time of night when time seems to stretch out, and the silence in the marble lobby was thick enough to cut with a knife. I was sitting at the front desk, staring at my phone, trying to stay awake, when the buzzer for the front door rang. I jumped, startled by the harsh sound. It was incredibly rare for anyone to come by at this hour. I looked at the security camera monitor and saw a man standing under the dim glow of the streetlamp. He was wearing a grease-stained neon vest, his hair was disheveled, and he looked like he had been awake for three days straight. I pressed the intercom button and asked what he needed. His voice came through the speaker, raspy and impatient. He claimed he had an urgent delivery for the office manager. I checked the logs and saw nothing scheduled, but he insisted the paperwork was signed and sealed. Against my better judgment, I buzzed him in. He walked toward my desk with a heavy, rhythmic thud of work boots on the floor. He dropped a clipboard onto my desk with a loud bang that echoed through the lobby. I told him he was at the wrong place, but he just stared at me with heavy eyes and pushed a pen into my hand. I signed for the delivery, mostly because I just wanted him to leave. He gestured for me to follow him outside, saying the package was too large for the front desk. We walked out into the night air toward a beat-up, white cargo van parked crookedly on the curb. As we got closer, I smelled it—a pungent, earthy scent of damp hay and musk. It was definitely not office supplies. He swung open the heavy rear doors, and I braced myself for something weird, but I was not prepared for what I saw. Standing there in the dark, blinking slowly in the light spilling from the street, was a real, live goat. It was a medium-sized animal with rough, shaggy fur and eyes that seemed to look right through my soul. The goat gave a soft, rhythmic bleat, and my brain struggled to process the reality of the situation. The driver didn't look phased at all. He reached into his pocket and handed me a crumpled, coffee-stained note. It read, 'The newest office mascot. Mandatory morale booster. Good luck.' I felt a wave of disbelief wash over me. I turned back to the driver, ready to protest, but he was already climbing into the driver's seat. He muttered something about his shift ending and roared off down the street before I could even ask his name. I stood there on the sidewalk, holding the lead rope of a goat that was currently chewing on my shoelace. I knew our office manager, Dave, was inside working late on a project. I figured he might know something about this absurdity. I led the goat through the lobby, its hooves clicking sharply against the polished granite. The sound was surreal, almost like a comedic movie, but the reality was much stranger. I found Dave’s office door cracked open. He was slumped over his desk, fast asleep with his head resting on a folded-up company jacket he used as a pillow on his cot. I knocked on the doorframe, and the goat let out a loud, insistent bleat that sounded like a distorted human scream. Dave jolted awake, looking frantic and disoriented. He shouted, 'What? Is the fire alarm going off?' I stood there with the rope in my hand, gesturing to the animal beside me. Dave squinted, rubbing his eyes, and then stared at the goat. He looked at me, then back at the goat, and his mouth fell open. He told me he hadn't ordered anything, least of all a farm animal. We stood there in the quiet office for a moment, listening to the goat clip-clop its way into the breakroom. It started sniffing at the refrigerator. Dave finally stood up, his face pale with confusion. We spent the next three hours dealing with the fallout. The goat was remarkably stubborn, and every time I tried to steer it toward the exit, it would plant its feet and refuse to move. We tried calling the non-emergency police line, but the dispatcher sounded like they thought we were making a prank call. We were told that unless the animal was aggressive, it was a civil matter. I sat in the breakroom with the goat, watching it investigate the water cooler while Dave paced back and forth, making frantic phone calls to his boss, trying to explain why there was livestock in the accounting department. Eventually, we found a local animal rescue farmer listed online who specialized in rehoming abandoned pets. He was surprisingly calm when Dave explained the situation, simply telling us that this happened more often than we might think. By 6:00 AM, just as the sun began to peek over the Chicago skyline, the farmer arrived with a horse trailer. Watching the goat finally hop into the trailer was a relief I can hardly describe. The farmer laughed, wished us luck, and drove away. Dave sat down in the breakroom, exhausted, and looked at me. He just sighed and said, 'If you tell anyone about this, I will deny everything.' I know he will never hear the end of it, though. That night remains the weirdest shift of my life, a bizarre memory of hay, clicking hooves, and the absolute chaos that can unfold when the rest of the city is fast asleep.