Eliot Awakens To Dead Animal

At 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, Jessica J. Means ’09 was finishing her breakfast in the Eliot House Dining Hall when she and her House tutor entered the Eliot courtyard after reading an e-mail sent over the House’s open list.

“There was the skin, the body, and the head of a goat draped over a tree branch,” Means said. “On the gate facing Memorial Drive there was a head impaled, literally impaled. A post was stuck up its neck and it was facing the sky.”

The animal remains had come from preparations for Dunster House’s annual spring Goat Roast.

“I was just kind of sad someone would do that to the body of an animal,” Means said.

Dunster House purchased two slaughtered goats to be roasted at the celebration, according to Mark McCabe, director of the Cambridge Animal Commission.

While Dunster has placed a slaughtered goat in the Eliot courtyard in years past, this year the Cambridge Animal Commission and Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) investigated the remains because a passerby saw the two goats heads in front of Eliot’s Memorial Drive entrance, according to an e-mail sent out by the Dunster House Committee.

“After an initial investigation, we saw no signs of cruelty to animals,” McCabe said, adding that what was done to the corpses was “just bad decision-making.”

“The University is dismayed by the display and will take steps to ensure it does not happen again,” HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano said in an e-mailed statement.

After HUPD investigated the incident, Catalano said they determined that no criminal activity had occurred.

Boston media picked up on the story this weekend and local TV station WBZTV attributed the incident to a prank by anthropology students.

But regarding the goat remains, HUPD said it currently has “no further details.”

Daniel E. Lieberman, an anthropology professor and head tutor of biological anthropology at the College, said he had not been aware of last weekend’s goat incident.

“That kind of reminds me of Lord of the Flies,” he said.

Lieberman added that anthropology students are “a very nerdy bunch” who would probably not have strung the pelts.

—Staff writer Charles J. Wells can be reached at wells2@fas.harvard.edu.