If you have ever driven through Crete and wondered who really owns the road, the answer is the goat. They wander where they please — across highways, up cliffs, into olive groves. At night, when their bells jingle on the hillsides, it can sound like a spell, a soft music of iron tapping stone, as if the mountains themselves are whispering.
Goats outnumber people on the island. Their milk fills the barrels of mizithra and graviera, their grazing keeps the hills alive with thyme and wild greens. In Crete, to talk about goats is to talk about survival. They are not romantic animals; they are stubborn, clever, and hungry. But they are woven into daily life as tightly as olive oil and bread.
Up in the mountains, farmers like Costas still keep them. He is not rich from it — in fact, he is underpaid for the milk and the work. But you can see the sweetness in his hand when he feeds a goat a carob pod, the way the animal chews slowly, trusting, as if the whole mountain has paused for a moment of kindness. The milk tastes of those carobs, of thyme, of the land itself. That is what makes Cretan cheese so different.
So yes, goats here cast spells, not of magic, but of rhythm. Their bells echo at night, their shapes cut the skyline by day, and their milk seeps into the food that keeps Crete strong. If you stay long enough, you will hear them in your dreams — the island speaking in the language of goats.