Hank is in his own world as he follows his buddy Todd “Gready” Cornish up Pratt Street in Southwest Baltimore. The black and white Nubian goat sniffs rowhome porches, his goatee grazing doormats. He nibbles on neighborhood shrubs and windowsill herbs before a sharp whistle from Cornish summons him to pick up the pace.
For nearly six years, Cornish and Hank have routinely walked the city hand and hoof. They hang out mostly in Mount Clare, Franklin Square and other Southwest Baltimore neighborhoods, where they have become a fixture. Hank sticks so close to his owner that Cornish casts two shadows — onea lanky body with a wide, cowboy hat and two legs and the other four-legged with horns.
Hank has built quite the reputation with his entertaining antics, like sporting a matching Steelers jersey to the Ravens’ tailgate to torment fans and pushing strangers with his horns.
Hank’s a bit intimidating at first glance — a 6-foot goat clomping along busy city blocks. To Cornish, he teeters the line between funny and menacing. For others, who have gotten used to seeing him, he’s just Hank from around the way, a part of the neighborhood.
Things were quiet on one of the pair’s recent walks until a man spotted Hank. “I seen your crazy ass on TV with that goat,” the man yelled at them. Cornish laughed it off and kept walking. Around the corner, another neighbor speed-walking to work stopped for a few moments to rub Hank’s head.
Hank’s usually calm during their walks, but there’s one little tree he doesn’t seem to like. Countless times, Cornish said, Hank has stopped to ram the tree or try to uproot it
“He’s got a good personality when he’s not revved up. I’ve never seen an animal with that much personality,” Cornish said.
Hank lives among other horses at the stables on South Carlton Street in the Hollins Market neighborhood, including Miss Pearl, who has one pale, blue eye, Pimp and Kitty, who is Cornish’s favorite to ride.
When Hank is ready for a walk, he raises himself out of his bed, made out of an old storage tank and layered with hay. He swings his head enough so the rope connected to his spiked collar wraps around his horns and he starts to pull.
He wants out.
Hank can be a little hard-headed, and it isn’t because of the horns. When Cornish isn’t getting ready fast enough, the goat rams his head into an old pool table. When it’s time to go, Hank grabs his own snack, a whole bag of purple grapes, off an arabber’s cart, leaving behind a few stray grapes for Charlotte the pig.
Aside from Cornish, nothing comes between Hank and a meal or snack, and it’s been that way since he first got to Baltimore.
Cornish wasn’t expecting to get a goat the day he went to a farm in New Holland, Pennsylvania, to check out the livestock and horses with a group from the stables. When he did see what seemed to be a thousand small goats, he said, he considered getting a brown and white one.
Then he saw baby Hank.
Maybe it was his little tilted head or docile eyes, but Cornish somehow knew there was something about him. “Out of all of them goats,” he said, “you could tell he was different.”
Cornish and a few others took turns hand feeding Hank or giving him formula in bottles. He often bit the nipples off.
Cornish has always had animals or pets since he was 8 or 9 years old. He loves them so much his mother calls him “Doctor Dolittle.” He started off with a bunch of hamsters before learning from the older men in his neighborhood how to train and keep pigeons. He has his own lime green pigeon coop at home and a bowlegged American bully mix with a stout body named Magic.
Charles McLean, a longtime arabber, said despite Cornish’s other animals, Hank only wants eyes and attention on him. He’s seen the goat get jealous when Cornish’s attention is elsewhere. Hank is spoiled, he says.
“I think he [Cornish} is more closer to Hank than any other animal other than his birds and horses,” McLean said.
Even when Hank was little, Cornish could be spotted with him “all over the place,” he added.
Hank doesn’t like Cornish to be out of his sight and all bets are off if food is involved. Cornish made a pit stop at a corner store during their walk to get Hank potato chips. But Cornish took too long, and Hank, who was waiting outside, grew impatient and shoved his way inside the store the second someone exited. Luckily, Cornish was close enough to the door to grab Hank by the horns and usher him out.
Multiple videos of Hank on TikTok and Instagram show Cornish feeding him or Hank following someone who has food he wants. Then there are those who mistakenly think Hank will back down from a play fight. He often nudges them with his head and snout and backs them into a corner or up a few rowhome steps. But it’s all in good fun.
As the two pass the B&O Railroad Museum, a man calls out to Cornish. “Don’t bring him over here. I’m not trying to fight today,” he said, before asking where Hank’s hat was.
The hat is a fedora. Hank made the local news while wearing it a couple years ago while walking down Washington Boulevard with a lady goat named Jill. One onlooker told a reporter that Hank was dressed even better than his owner.
”Man, you didn’t even have to put me out there like that,” Cornish remembers saying.
That 15 minutes of fame caught the attention of folks at Pickett Brewing Company in Pigtown, who thought a goat in a fedora embodied the quirkiness of the neighborhood.
So much so that they created “Goats in Hats,” a dark stout.
One of the owners said she hasn’t met Hank in person, but isn’t opposed to chatting about how they can partner more with him in the future.
Cornish wants to create a hat line for Hank and hopes to train him to pull a carriage for kids at parties. He already uses his birds for funerals, weddings and gender reveals.
On the way back to the stables during their recent walk, some people were taken aback by Hank’s size and slowly backed into their front doors or back gates when he passed by. Cornish patted him on the head and scratched him behind the ears as his tail flicked away gnats.
One woman called her grandbabies on FaceTime so they could see Hank walk past her house. Another woman stopped her car in the middle of the street so her son could take a picture.
Here and there, Cornish pulled down tree or bush branches for Hank to get a bite.
“He definitely became apart of my life. I’m attached to him,” Cornish said.
His second shadow, with a mouthful of shrubs, doesn’t seem to mind.
