The saga of Snowball, the celebrity killer goat, began in the countryside of Cherokee County, out where the new subdivisions of Atlanta`s northern suburbs give way to red clay, lush woods and the habits of an older, rural South.

Carl Hulsey, 77, a retired poultry worker, was standing in the yard outside his mobile home a week ago when one of his goats, Snowball, butted him once, then twice, knocking him to his knees. Hulsey scrambled onto the porch. Snowball, a 110-pound stud with curling, footlong horns, clambered right behind.

While Hulsey`s wife watched, Snowball then rammed his master, who toppled off the porch and died.

''Blunt trauma to the abdominal cavity,'' said the coroner. Snowball had ruptured Hulsey`s stomach.

Among friends and relatives who gathered at Norman Sosebee`s funeral home, bringing fried chicken, sandwiches and cake to the stunned family, religious fatalism cushioned the grief.

''Most of us up here are Baptist, and if you`re a devout country Baptist, you are raised on the fact that there are some things that are just going to be, and this was one of those things that was meant to be,'' said Sosebee, a longtime family friend who is also the funeral parlor owner and county coroner.

He praised Hulsey as a good man, liked by his neighbors.

Perhaps more shocking to Hulsey`s friends than his death was that in the world outside his pocket of Cherokee County, there was little display of sympathy for Carl Hulsey. The real victim, in the eyes of many, was Snowball. It appears that Hulsey was training Snowball to be a ''watch goat,'' an unusual but not unheard-of job for a goat. By some accounts, Hulsey routinely beat the 2-year-old animal, hoping to make it ornery enough to protect his rolling acres from predators who might wend their way up the long dirt road to the Hulseys` shabby trailer.

By other accounts, Snowball was a mean goat from whom Hulsey was defending himself at the time he died.

''He didn`t abuse the goat,'' Sosebee said. ''He would take his stick and hit it across the horns. That did not hurt the goat physically but it alienated the goat. It`s just one of those things where the goat and the owner didn`t see eye to eye.''

Whatever Hulsey`s intentions, many animal lovers saw a certain divine justice in his fate. Outraged by charges that Hulsey beat Snowball-and was swatting the goat when it attacked-more than 500 protesters from around the nation called Cherokee County animal control officials after it was announced that Snowball might be killed. Many offered to adopt Snowball. Some made death threats.

''What happens to the goat happens to you,'' one caller reportedly warned.

County officials, reluctant to take the risk that Snowball would kill again, were stymied.

''We had to be real careful in the decisions that we made,'' said Donna Floyd of the county animal control unit. ''This is the first killer goat in Georgia.''

Hulsey`s wife, Alma, who has no telephone, was quoted as saying she would rather see Snowball in her freezer than in a sanctuary.

Meanwhile, newspapers and TV stations from around the world called to check out the story. Snowball made repeat appearances on the nightly news. Jokes abounded, about ''Billy Goat Gruff'' and ''Snowball`s chance in hell.'' On Wednesday, Snowball got a reprieve. He was taken to Noah`s Ark, a private animal shelter for neglected and abused animals in tiny Locust Grove, south of Atlanta. Four hours after his arrival, he was laid on a kitchen table and neutered, an operation intended to make him less aggressive.

''I have rabbits here that`s meaner than him,'' said Jama Hedgecoth, the shelter`s founder.

Hedgecoth said Hulsey misjudged Snowball. ''Any animal with teeth will bite, any animal with hooves will kick, any animal with horns will stick you,'' she said. ''A goat if it`s abused, it`s going to go after humans.''

What`s more, she said, ''You can`t keep a stud goat as a pet. A stud goat wants to breed all the time, and they do not care what they breed.''

But even Hedgecoth has been perplexed by the outpouring of emotion for Snowball. More than 300 sympathizers have called, several of them sobbing,

''You`ve saved Snowball!'' By Thursday, at least 100 had dropped by.

''Some call and say, `Hulsey deserved it,` '' Hedgecoth said. ''I just say, ''He didn`t deserve to die.` Human life is a lot more important than animal life. This was an accident.''

Three people called asking to buy Snowball`s horns. As it turns out, the horns won`t be removed, though they will be capped with rubber tips.

If the story of Snowball has its bits of tragedy, it also has its ironies. Tom Teepen, editor of the editorial pages of the Atlanta

Constitution, noted one in a recent column.

''We are keener to understand and spare an abused goat than an abused human,'' he wrote. ''Indeed, when a human kills, we sneer at his defense as a dodge-`Yeah, yeah sure, his mother didn`t love him`-yet we are sentimental about killer goats. We are a very strange animal.''

As for Snowball, he is expected to live the rest of his life at Noah`s Ark, where on Thursday he stared docilely out of his pen, betraying no sign that he was capable of killing a man.