Why I Don't Play Football

Today, my relationship with sheep, which was not good to begin with, took a downward turn. To put it delicately, I got freaking leveled by a sheep, twice. In my defense, they are stronger than one's eye might deduce.

Once again, we had to wrangle a few sheep away from the herd for breeding. What a miserable task. Once again, several volunteers, trying over and over to corner a bunch of sheep who all think that we are plotting to kill them, or worse. We might as well carry butcher knives and chant Satanic hymns when we wrangle them, the way those stupid sheep react.

So, we cornered them, and the particular sheep we were going for, a big ole' Jacobs, broke for it, just to my right. As I lunged toward her, she took flight. Right into my face. Glasses fly, I'm on the ground, and the sheep is upside down, next to me. She gets up faster than I do.

Second try, we have them in the opposite corner. This time, we do a good job of cornering the whole flock, so that I am able to wade in and grab the sheep before she can wedge away from the rest. I get a nice hold of her wool. She, of course, thinks I am seconds away from throttling her and, I don't know, doing something horrible like casting her sheep soul to eternal sheep hell. She's kicking like hell. I hold her, but we don't have a harness. She calms down momentarily. Someone suggests I just try walking with her. I slacken my grip. BAM. Off she goes, and, somehow, I am on the ground again. Stupid, stupid sheep. No injuries, except my pride. After the second fall, I quietly excused myself from the paddock and went to go nurse my emotional bruises. Sheep: 2, Sam: o.

Funny side note. We were wrangling the sheep in part to inject a few with hormone shots to get them in heat. Well, we found out the hard way that one of those sheep was not a sheep, but a castrated ram. So, some poor ram got a nice estrogen shot surprise. Whoops. At least we didn't put him in the breeding pen.