Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Rogue Lambs

Today our sheep ran away.

We got home after 3 hours out and the lambs that had been happily grazing in the small yard next to the house were gone. The only trace of them was a bit of wool wrapped around the bottom of the bent fencing. We both instantly panicked. I sprinted to the bag of grain, grabbed an old broken bowl and filled it, then went running around the front shaking the bowl yelling "here sheep sheep sheep!".  Nathan started tossing things out of the back of my car (in case we had to put the sheep in there, he said later) then took off down the driveway. I hopped in the car and we frantically drove down the street (I'm pretty sure I was still shaking the bowl of grain) then realized it would be better to split up. I got out and ran through all of the neighbours' properties (still shaking my bowl) and Nathan drove back and forth down the road with my purse on the roof and people behind him honking to try and warn him about said purse on roof. Eventually I ran into our neighbour (almost literally) and he told me that he'd been chasing our lambs all over the place but had them cornered, finally, about 10 properties down in a mostly enclosed field. His friends were on their way with fence panels to corral them.

By the time we got there we saw no trace of the lambs. More running around ensued until we finally spotted them in a thick patch of bushes and trees. They wanted nothing to do with my bowl of grain so Nathan dove in one side and I dove in the other and we managed to each grab a lamb.  We held them in the back of our (extremely kind) neighbour's truck and drove them home.

We gave our tattooed helpers beer and eggs and a tour of the farm and we managed to impart some wisdom on one of them, too - up until today he hadn't realized that lambs and sheep were the same animal....

The lambs are safely back home in a much more secure paddock. As soon as we put them in there they came "baaaa"ing over to the fence for grain.

1 comment:

  1. so scary!! I'll have to tell you about the one time our beasts got out--glad you got them back safely!! loved the Ruckles photos--I remember those gorgeous turkeys--would love to live on SSI! Sounds like a great bday weekend-good on ya Nathan!

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