Ha! Explanation found. Howdidweeverlivewithoutgoogle.

I went for a long walk yesterday, down the hill, into Elliott Bay park, along the waterfront to Pioneer Square. During the along the waterfront phase I looked up to my left at the steep hillside between the shoreline and downtown Seattle – and stopped in amazement because it was full of goats. Goats, I tell you! Goats in downtown Seattle, goats in an urban landscape. They were all browsing away, as goats do. Huh. Obviously they were there to weed the slope, but I wanted to know more.

So I found more. From King-5 News last June:

Farhan Syed spends his free time at the office these days looking out the window with his co-workers.

“We are men who watch goats,” said Sayed, who works for a software company in downtown Seattle.

120 goats are at work on the hillside below the Alaskan Way Viaduct outside Sayed’s window. The goats are under the supervision of Head Goat Wrangler Tammy Dunakin, who also owns the Rent-A-Ruminant company.

Dunakin said the Seattle Department of Transportation hired her and her goats to clear a site that is too steep and dangerous for humans and their equipment.

No noisy polluting weed-eaters, no herbicides – just a hillside dotted with sweet goats.