Happy sea creatures cling to fence singing at goats

A small girl lives with her father, who is fairly useless. They and their similarly useless neighbours live by the sea and keep goats. Creatures looking like mad fluffy sea urchins are obsessed by goats and cling to the fences of the goats' pens singing with joy to be close to the goats, but the singing sounds like a high pitched shriek, which worries the goats, who then produce less milk. The girl is the only one with initiative and tries to get adults to move/come up with new business, but they say they've always lived there and done what they do, so even though the sea creatures are severely affecting the goats they won't change. The book has wonderfully strange illustrations in colour, I think they are on every page. I particularly remember one of a worried goat looking over its shoulder at the mad things on the fence. I think it may have been published in the late 1990s. Possibly UK? I did once track down the title, and discovered it was only printed once, but have now forgotten it again. It might have been called 'The Singing somethings of somewhere', and I feel reasonably that the name of either the place or the creatures began with G.

This sounds like The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, a one-off children's book by George Saunders that features illustrations by Lane Smith:

http://turtleandrobot.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/shrieking-orange-creatures-tired-...

It's still in print and available on amazon and amazon.co.uk.

The description, illustrations by Lane Smith, and that title... Ooooh, I'm going to have to get a copy for myself!

Thank you diana.n. That's it exactly. Wondrous strange it is too. I bought it years ago for the children of some friends with whom I am no longer in touch, and had not seen it again anywhere.