Keith's ancestors were wild.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The domestic goat descends from the Bezoar Ibex, a wild goat native to the Zagros Mountains of Iran and the adjacent highlands of Turkey and Pakistan.
The Bezoar Ibex lives at elevations of up to 4,000 metres. It navigates vertical cliff faces. It has been photographed on surfaces that would require technical climbing equipment for any human to access. It survives on vegetation: scrub, thorny plants, coarse mountain grasses, that would be inedible to almost anything else at altitude.
It was domesticated approximately ten thousand years ago.
The domestication process was not, by the standards of most livestock species, particularly thorough. Cattle were selected heavily for docility and reduced flight response over thousands of years. Sheep were selected for reduced aggression and increased herding instinct.
Goats were selected primarily for milk and fibre production and the ability to survive on marginal land, and not much else was considered, which is why goats retained a degree of independence and problem-solving ability that most domesticated livestock had bred out by the Bronze Age.
Keith is the ten-thousand-year result of this process.
Keith climbs barn roofs because his ancestor climbed the Zagros Mountains.
Keith opens gates because his ancestor navigated terrain without pathways.
Keith eats thistle, bramble, dock, Japanese knotweed, Steve's bindweed, and the moss off corrugated iron because his ancestor extracted nutrition from the thorned scrub of Iranian highland at 3,000 metres in January.
The fence, from Keith's ancestral perspective, is a minor inconvenience.
The gate is a gentle slope.
The barn roof is a modest incline.
Steve's new fence is not yet solved, but Steve's new fence is not the Zagros Mountains.
Keith has not been to the Zagros Mountains.
Keith does not need to go to the Zagros Mountains.
Keith has Devon.
Devon is enough.
Keith is on the roof.
Keith is thinking.