The sheep that wouldn’t budge
It was a cold winter morning. I was hiking through the British countryside enjoying some birdwatching on the way when I suddenly encountered something rather peculiar: in the middle of a frozen field there was a sheep laying flat on its back with its feet up in the air. It just lay there, motionless on the icy ground while its fellow flock mates were enjoying a chew on the crispy grass. I stopped wanting to find out more about this mysterious behaviour, only to see about fifty sheep staring at me. The group of sheep couldn’t handle being in my nice vicinity so in no time retreated to one of the far corners of the field, leaving the helpless sheep behind.
The print the helpless sheep left on the frozen grass
Standing there on the edge of the field looking at the stuck sheep moving its feet as if running against the grey sky, I suddenly realized to my amazement that sheep thus apparently cannot get up onto their legs when they roll onto their back! It was time to help so I hopped over the fence, walked towards the sheep and started to push it. However, helping it was not as easy as I hoped: each time I pushed the sheep and it tried getting up it just rolled over onto its other side! Luckily after minutes of hard work I somehow managed to push and pull the sheep at the same time so that it finally managed to get onto its shaky legs again. Confused after having been laying there for hours or possibly even a full day, the sheep just stood there for a couple seconds looking around at me and sneezed, after which it slowly started hobbling back to its flock of grazing friends.
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Fantastic! Love your website! Cool sheep – and Twin Peaks music.
Thanks Lisa! Good to hear you are also a Twin Peaks fan
Jolle! Nice story with a very whitty edge. Like the music as well. xx
Poor sheep. Glad that you happened to help it before it got irrevocably frozen
Thanks Sarah! I found another sheep later that day, which must have been laying there for hours. A week later I spoke with the farmer and he told me he didnt really care about his sheep, but that he pushes them over now and then if he finds them like that. Strange…
Thank god, at first I thought the sheep’s wool had frozen to the grass
I had a similar encounter once when I had to help out a lamb that was bleating in quite a high pitch because it snuck out through a hole in the fence and couldn’t get back – the fence was bent too much to the outside. I had quite a hard time catching it and lifting it over the fence back to its friends! Apparently sheep can be heavier than they look.