NEW YORK -- Normally, a report of bearded intruders secretly penetrating heavily guarded transportation sites in New York would raise lots of red flags.

But these would-be trespassers were goats -- brought in to clean up poison ivy and other unwanted weeds at historic Fort Wadsworth, a 200-year-old Revolutionary War site on Staten Island near the Verrazano Bridge.

Two weeks ago they slipped under a metal fence separating the fort from bridge property. But no alarms or sensors that were installed to guard against intruders were ever tripped.

Officials say that fence isn't actually part of the bridge protection system, and since the goats didn't get past a second, more formidable fence, there wasn't really a breach.