In Seattle, you can rent goats to help take care of pesky invasive vegetation like blackberry bushes. Blackberries sound like a good idea until they take over, and they're very difficult to remove. Goats will eat them, though, so you can rent a small herd of goats and in a few days, the brambles will be eaten back to a level where they can be dug up by the roots.

I have no idea whether this was the case in this particular situation.