Fainting condition sparks goat plea for garden rescue
Thursday, 13 November 2025
If ever there’s an excuse to get out of a bit of weeding then Leila Ball’s is up there.
Ball has vasovagal syncope, a condition that causes fainting. She has experienced several episodes over the past two years, the most recent in June, when she collapsed and broke her leg.
The spiral fracture required surgery, a rod and nine screws, to repair it. Ball was in a moon boot for weeks and was forced to use crutches to get around.
Which is where the weeding comes in. Ball has posted a plea on a community Facebook page for the loan of a goat, or, at a push, a sheep, to get an overgrown Berhampore garden under control.
Speaking to The Post this week Ball said she and her flatmate had managed to tidy up an easily accessible section of their section ‒ “we took a whack at it over the weekend”‒ but a terraced area to the rear of the property had proven too difficult with her injured leg.
“Honestly, the top section is an absolute freaking jungle. It’s just grown really wild over winter while I’ve basically been stuck in the house.”
The idea to borrow a goat didn’t just come out of the blue. Ball grew up in Waiau, a small rural town in north Canterbury, and had an angora goat as a pet. Squidward, named after the fictional anthropomorphic octopus from television’s SpongeBob SquarePants, was a constant companion during her time living with her parents.
“I got her when I was four and had her till I was 17… I miss her. Coming from the country ‘can I borrow your goat for an afternoon, got a big job on’ just seems like a regular thing. Using a lawn mower is just kind of completely foreign to me.”
An animal weed-eater seemed like the best of both worlds, Ball said. “They'll be happy. I'll be happy.
“My dad was a woodsman. Doing log splitting with him was my first job. Ordinarily you’d cut a fallen tree on someone’s farm and they’d do a swap … one year he did a job for a local beekeeper and we ended up with a big bucket of raw manuka honey.”
As of Thursday, zero goats had been offered, though someone had proffered a clutch of chickens. “I feel like they’d be great, but possibly not to take down the larger plants and things.”
So, if there are no takers, or in this case, givers? “We’ll just have to get a machete and try and carve a path.”
Vasovagal syncope is a fairly common condition. One in three people will experience an episode at some point in their lives.
Meanwhile, and Ball is well aware of the irony, there is a breed of goat that keels over when startled. The so-called Tennessee fainting goats are born with a hereditary condition called myotonia congenita, a disorder that affects the skeletal muscles. When the muscles are voluntarily contracted, such as in the act of running away from a potential threat, muscle relaxation can be delayed, leaving the muscles rigid and rendering the animal unable to move.