To understand the situation, we have to go back to Friday night when I was able to catch up with a dear friend whom I hadn't seen in a year and half. Since I didn't return home until 11 and wasn't ready to fall asleep until midnight, I thought it would probably be smart if I set the alarm to 7:30am instead of my usual Saturday 6:30am. That would still give me an well over an hour to get ready for and commute to class. I snuggled up in bed, and fell immediately to sleep. I was rudely awakened by...
"Baa. Baaaa. BAAAAA!"
"What the...!" was my first reaction. I should not be hearing the sheep right below my window. The sheep are pastured up in the back field, roughly a quarter mile away.
But just to make sure I looked out my window, and there she was. Letting the whole world know that it was 6:34am on a Saturday morning.
"OH CRAP!" was my immediate next thought. Fourteen sheep prancing around my front lawn, merely twenty feet from the road.
I threw on the clothes closest to me (which happened to be the really nice jeans I had worn the night before) and ran out to survey the situation in the early morning fog. My immediate concern was that they would scurry into the road. I'd like to think that sheep aren't dumb enough to go into the road, but indeed they are. My saving grace in this case: the grain in the small barn. The ewes had already discovered the metal trashcans filled with chicken grain and they were into it nose deep. I let them have at it while I surreptitiously enclosed the chicken fence around them.
Perimeter secure. Sort of. Temporarily. It was now 6:40. And I was faced with a few choices. I had until 8:15am, and then I had to leave for class if I wanted to be on time. I mentally reviewed my options:
 |
| Ewes collaborating about how to cause mayhem on the farm |
A). Shove all 14 sheep into the horse stall. This seemed like a viable option at first, as they were practically in the stall anyway. They would be secure there, albeit a little cramped, and then I could deal with it all later. Oh, but no. I had that silly pharmacology exam on Sunday, thus needing Saturday after class to study. I couldn't spend several hours in the afternoon figuring out what to do with them.
B). I could bring the fence (all electric netting in 100-200 foot sections) from the back field down to the barn area and set them up in a fully functional temporary pasture area. As long as there were no glitches, I could set up a half acre paddock in about an hour. If there were glitches, I was SOL.
C. I could try to entice them to follow me (all 14 of them) back up to the back field where they were supposed to be. If this plan actually works, it was the most attractive option, since there was an abundance of grass up there. However, shepherding 14 sheep a quarter mile is not my forte. It would be mayhem. In addition, I had no idea what the status of the fence was up there.
I was strongly leaning towards option B as I walked up to the back field to survey the damage. Two sections of the fence were torn down and it looked like a deer had jumped through and gotten tangled before tearing the fence apart and escaping. Usually a deer will easily clear the 42 inch height. However, our neighbor's fence line is just about 10 feet away from ours, and I think the deer cleared theirs, but misjudged ours. Anyway, I didn't have time to make any repairs on the damaged sections. All I could do was move the in-tact sections down one at a time (they're heavy), setting them up in the grassy area between our two barns. It was very methodical and I was moving the last section at 7:20. I still had to connect the fence to the barn, connect the wires to make sure the fence was hot when turned on, move the sheep and get them water before 7:50. While I'm in a rural nursing program, I'm not sure my classmates would have appreciated me showing up in soggy jeans smelling of sheep (and worse) so I had to give myself a few minutes for a shower.
This story has a rather anti-climatic ending as the sheep were happy to go into their new pasture, and I was able to get to class on time. The only glitch was that the dog, who had been out with me this entire time, had decided to roll in some sort of dead thing or other and I clearly did not have time to give her a bath. She simply just had to suffer?/relish in? smelling of dead thing all day.
It retrospect I'm thankful that the sheep BAA!ed when they did; otherwise I wouldn't have had the time to do much about the situation, or I would have had to miss class (which, considering the entire course was run over 4 weekends I didn't really want to do).
And as you've probably figured out by now, I was indeed home alone when this most recent mayhem ensued. It always works that way, doesn't it?
For another "funny now, but not at the time" story that happened to us (although not on the farm) check out the Montana Misadventures post.
