Friday, March 31, 2006

Apropos of Wednesday's post, I began the day by driving over to the other half of the farm to rescue a sheep that had gotten herself tangled in some old barbed wire. You have to picture this. The barbed wire is part of an old fence line, cut and coiled against a tree jutting out from some rocks in the hillside, with one end of the wire still tacked to the tree. The sheep managed to find this one spot in the midst of a hundred acres and then succeeded in getting her head through the coil , looping barbed wire twice around her neck, once across her body and embed several small loops in the wool on her backside. All without once puncturing her skin. She is one of our wilder ewes, and when she saw me coming to her rescue, she started running around the tree, carrying the wire with her about knee high. She circled and I jumped, hopping foot to foot, playing double-dutch with rows of sheep motivated rusty spiked wire, chasing after her, cursing myself for forgetting my work gloves and trying to remember when I had my last tetanus shot. After several close calls for both of us, she snagged herself on some rocks and I was able to pin her down well enough to untangle the barbs from her wool. After she was freed she headed off back towards the barn without so much as a thank you or even a glance backward. It was one of those days where I have to agree with eldest son when he says, "Face it Dad, sheep are just stupid."