Instead of traveling in a crate or trailer, the boys arrived in the open bed of a pickup truck, tied down flat with bungee cords.

The family who brought them to our Watkins Glen Sanctuary said they’d found the two just wandering around. The family’s small children were weeping, though, suggesting a very different story that we’d never learn. But seeing them handled like boxes rather than living beings, we knew we couldn’t ignore their need.

As that first day progressed, we realized a likely reason their original home wasn’t working out. These two were escape artists and also lovers of trouble!

When they arrived, we still had our animal hospital area in our original office/shelter building called “the white house,” with pens in the back that were more than four feet tall. Although the boys were just babies and were very short, scaling that wall was no problem.

What was a problem was their refusal to adhere to our quarantine practices. (We isolate all of our incoming animals from the general population until they are confirmed to be healthy, but Jake and Peanut were eager to meet new friends!) We would find them in the kitchen, in pens with chickens eating their food. Clearly, they needed a different setup!

We moved them to an area set up for birds, with a wooden six-foot-tall fence around it. Although they did not escape, they ensured that the farm assistants had plenty to do—turning over the cans used to take out their soiled bedding, jumping on those cans in an attempt to jump over the taller fence, and butting their tools or the staffers themselves. They really kept everyone on their toes!

Finally, after their quarantine period was over and they’d received a clean bill of health, the boys were ready to move to the big farm. Here, too, they quickly established themselves as troublemakers, attempting to get out of their new barn and slip into the adjoining pastures and start head-butting matches with their neighbors—some of whom were far too old to deal with these energetic boys.

Although this behavior was frowned upon (since we were constantly trying to find them and bring them back to their barn), it changed the life of one of our more recently rescued goats at the time: Gloria.

Gloria was terrified of other goats and seemed to want to only live with people. Unfortunately, knocking people to their knees was part of the territory with this relationship, so we were all really hoping to help her connect with someone she could trust.

When she did finally move into a goat barn, she lived alone in a pen. This lasted only a few days, though, because the then-still-very-tiny Jake and Peanut made it their mission to get under the pen fence and meet this newcomer to the barn.

They also seemed to know that she was afraid—because instead of starting a head-butting war, they just hung out in there. Soon, Gloria decided that goats were not that bad. She eventually moved in with her forever best friends Juniper and Dotty, so in this case, there was a positive and very life-changing experience that came out of the boys’ otherwise troublesome behavior.

Their other acts of kindness occur when they, our two top candidates, donate blood to victims of cruelty. When the Hudson Valley goats arrived, for example, Peanut and Jake—our two healthiest and most easygoing guys—made the trip to the Nemo Farm Animal Hospital at Cornell University to donate the plasma needed to get their new neighbors back on their feet. Goats including Dana, Hope, and Archie were all able to heal because these two boys gave them life-saving blood.

Besides these acts of kindness, however, Jake and Peanut—always attached at the hip—bullied their way through herd after herd. After living in the main barn with Gloria, they became too rough with some of our elderly goats, so they moved in with another group. But this group didn’t work either, since it included goats who really did not appreciate their high energy and love of roughhousing—so again, they moved to another barn.

This became an annual event until a few years ago. Once again, we thought we’d finally found the perfect place for them—and when that situation didn’t work either, we realized why: Jake & Peanut had lost their leader, Nate. (We’d moved Nate because he was being too rough on some of the other goats in his group.)

We worried Nate would be too much for Jake and Peanut since they were so much smaller. But we decided to try them in Nate’s new barn, and to our delight, they fit right in!

And so this is where they live—with their wall-butting, fence-breaking, 290-pound leader Nate and his best friend Leroy—and thankfully, this seems to be where they will stay.

Because like all the animals at our Sanctuaries, these two are individuals with preferences, very individual personalities—and the ability to choose the family that they fit with best.