Life

A Goat "Predicted" A Win For This Candidate

by Georgina Lawton

What with Election Day causing emotions to run high across the United States, we could all do with a laugh right about now, am I right? And luckily, you can count on us Brits for that, because our very own Scottish goat "predicted" a Hillary Clinton win. What's more, this goat has actually displayed impressive clairvoyant skills in the past. So he may be exactly what everyone needs to reaffirm their faith in American democracy right now.

Boots, a 3-year-old, purportedly psychic Golden Guernsey goat who hails from Jedburgh, Scotland, shot to fame earlier this year after he predicted the UK's bleak economic future by revealing that we would indeed leave the European Union with the Brexit vote. And he's also successfully spotted the football outcomes for a recent England team game (not exactly hard, but it's still notable success). Boots was taken in as a baby goat by trainer Sue Zacharias after he was rejected by his mother at birth; he now performs and predicts at magic shows all over the UK with Zacharias.

Earlier this year, Zacharias told the Scottish Sun exactly how Boots manages to get it right so often. “He is given two fortunes written on paper and chooses one for a special audience member," she said. "Boots always thinks about it very hard before picking one. ... He is massively unusual and a bit of a celebrity."

And when presented with the potential outcomes of the American presidency, Boots made his prediction clear this week by biting the sign marked "Clinton" for the win — so there's hope for us all yet, folks.

Zacharias said to The Scotsman of this recent test, “We gave him two options to see who might become the next U.S. President. He picked Clinton. He has been correct in the past, so I definitely think his prediction may be popular in America.”

Interestingly, there seems to be a spike in psychic animals offering up their political predictions as of late. A tiger and a polar bear in a Siberian zoo apparently made their differing opinions on the outcome of the election known recently when encouraged to pick pumpkins with the image of both Clinton and Trump on them: Yunona, the female tiger, backed Clinton, whereas polar bear Felix opted for the Trump pumpkin. Both the Trump and Clinton pumpkins were filled with a mixture of the animals' favorite meats.

Additionally, Yahoo News reported that in Beijing, a monkey named Geda highlighted his preference for Trump as the next leader of the United States on Nov. 3; he did so by holding up a sign that read "elected" as he sat between cardboard cutouts of both candidates, at a park in Changsha, China.

It's unknown, however, which animals have had the most clairvoyant success, but we're going to hold onto our optimism here in the UK. Hopefully it's catching.

Image: Getty Images