Thursday 9 July 2009

More sheep troubles

Its been a bit of a week for sheep at Rock HQ and tonight gave us a new situation to deal with. Roxy the white sheep closest to the camera was missing from the flock when they had their dinner tonight. At first I thought I had miscounted, but I kept arriving at the number 16, even with Burgers included in the flock we were short one sheep. Daffodil is on the hill somewhere so I convinced myself I had miscounted and set about the evening chores.

I carried a bucket of horse nuts up to the boys and in a depression by the fence I found Roxy upside down legs in the air. Now sheep have an incredible capacity for self harm and rolling onto their backs legs in the air is a sure fire way of killing itself. The weight of internal organs, the buildup of digestive gases makes it impossible to breathe. Not only that but they are them easy meat for predators like crows. Roxy was at the sheep's equivalent of the pearly gates and was bleeding from a nasty wound on her bum caused by crow beaks. Somehow she had managed not to lose her eyes. I rolled her over and helped her up, leaving her to stagger around like an extra from a horror film while I went back to HQ to get a long wide hypodermic needle to puncture one of her stomachs to let the gas out. She was still breathing when I got back and soon she was making a noise like a comedy balloon as I punctured her rock solid side. The smell sent the dogs running for cover and it was only the fact that I was kneeling down that saved me from keeling over. Roxy burped which added to the noxious fumes surrounding us but at least her breathing changed from rapid and shallow to slow and deep.

By the time I had coaxed her down the hill the build up of gas needed release once more but she seemed a bit brighter. Tracey braved the poisonous cloud enveloping Oak Bank and helped with the first aid on the stricken sheep's backside. A quick squirt of magic blue spray would prevent infection.

An hour later she was with the rest of the flock and appeared to be chewing the cud.

She might make it, it looks promising at the moment.

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