Linda Banks lives in an uneventful neighborhood in Pebble Beach. When the sun enters her backyard, she goes out onto the porch to breathe in the nature. When she sees a neighbor, she waves. Things rarely change.

Last month, however, something shook things up – “Have you seen the goats?!” a neighbor yelled, “There must be 50 of them in my backyard!”

It was a less absurd sight than many might think: In recent years, goat grazing has become an effective fire prevention alternative to complicated controlled burns and weed-killing chemicals. Where burns scorch the ground to the point where it damages the environment, and the use of chemicals can induce mutation that increases weed density and endurance, goats leave the land bare – devoid of the primary fuel that guns the 6,000 wildfires per year in California – but healthy. That was the plan in Pebble Beach in late August, when the Pebble Beach Company hired El Nido goat ranch of Northern California to come in. The man El Nido assigned to the job knows why the goats work so well.

“They eat everything,” said Arsenio Maldonado, a recent Chilean immigrant, through a translator.

Some 250 fuzzy firefighters gnawed around Del Monte Forest along Indian Village Road, becoming an event in the process. Cars stopped. Joggers slowed down. One goat scaled a tree trunk; another stood on his hind legs to reach the leaves of a tree. “It’s been a show all day!” Banks said.

The real show, according to the US Forest Service’s Steve Davis, is the one that doesn’t happen. The goats eliminate what he calls “flashy fuels,” cutting potential flame height from as high as 18 feet to a foot and a half.

Eyes bright, Banks reports another take on what they do: namely, spice up an otherwise tame Pebble Beach scene. “We live on the wild side!”  she says.