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For some golf courses, Goats serve as valuable members of maintenance staff

HINGHAM, Mass. — She wouldn’t be the first banker to seek out opportunities at local golf clubs, except Elaine Philbrick didn’t want to tee it up.

Her thought was, she could bring in something to “eat it up” — meaning the evasive plants, the unsightly weeds, the dreaded blackberry vines, the cat briar, the buckthorn. Oh, and the poison ivy. Definitely, the poison ivy would be Enemy No. 1.

“Goats love it,” said Rodney Hine, superintendent at the Boston Golf Club in this town 20 minutes south of Boston. “It’s their favorite food.”

As for Hine and his colleagues, they loathe it.