It took the commandants of the Military Academy and the Naval Academy to straighten things out, but the great Army-Navy goat caper has been resolved. West Point will return Billy, Navy's Angora goat football mascot, to the midshipmen. "We are notifying our naval counterparts that we are very happy to report that the goat has been located and that their beloved mascot will be returned to them," Lt. Col. James Whaley, the West Point spokesman, said yesterday. Following an old tradition of pre-Army-Navy-game pranks, a handful of West Point cadets disguised as slackers in Grateful Dead T-shirts and ski caps kidnapped Billy over the Veterans Day weekend from his home at a dairy farm not far from Annapolis. They released a picture, hostage style, of the Navy goat in the hands of a masked cadet.
"Meet our demands or the goat dies!"
As the West Point brass stifled giggles, the Naval Academy leadership bristled. There was an anti-mascot-rustling agreement in effect between the academies, the Annapolis spokesman said Wednesday. That meant, he said, that he did not believe Army cadets would be so dishonorable as to steal the goat. But Colonel Whaley, the Army spokesman, admitted yesterday that cadets had done the deed. He said they came forward and received amnesty in exchange for disclosing Billy's whereabouts: a farm in Pennsylvania. Just how Billy will get back to Annapolis was not clear, the colonel said, since yesterday's snow storm made travel difficult and the possibility remained that the goat would be turned over tomorrow at the Army-Navy game at Giants Stadium in North Jersey, the larcenous cadets' original plan. Colonel Whaley said the academy was ready to lend Navy a mule. "But we found the goat and we are very happy that they will be able to have their mascot back."
I'm sure that the cadets that pulled this off will receive a stern letter of counseling that will be worth a lot of promotion points during their Army careers. 
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