Agoraphobic sheep and rescued rabbits

There are many mysteries associated with smallholding, like why are buckets never where you leave them, or where slugs come from, having killed over 750 in the last week, some the size of squirrels how do they keep appearing in the onion bed, they are suffering losses of World War one proportions and still they come.

Top of the smallholder mystery list is how did poorly sheep get out of a fully enclosed field and run off leaving Crispy bleating mournfully over loves lost.

This is top, just beating the mystery of Rocky and the rabbit. Rocky the 110 pound Bernese Mountain Dog came galloping down the hillside with a bunny in his mouth. Now he can run, very fast if needed but swerving and changing direction like a rabbit can when chased is not his forte, so somehow he picked up a rabbit which he brought and dropped at my feet, very carefully so he wasn't hunting it. Tracey put it in a spare hutch but we didn't hold out too much hope as it was painfully thin. It died four hours later.

Last night when I checked on the sheep at the Ghost House I fetched some water from the stream, I couldn't work out why it smelt so bad. Luckily the house had a water barrel from the gutter which was full of fresh rain water so the sheep were sorted, but I was puzzled by the stagnant foul smelling muck that had threatened to swamp my boots.

I checked the sheep today, and fetched some more apples and solved the puzzle. On the way back two clues told me why it was so rancid.
I also saw the poorly sheep who ran off when she saw me but was later found when I fed the pigs hiding in the corner of the pen. She point blank refused to leave and is now settled on a bed of hay with some sheep food and water to keep her going. I suppose animals can suffer from agoraphobia, or perhaps shes from Chicken Licken the sequel, shes Sheepy Weepy who thinks the sky is falling in.

Back to the foul pit of water I had been playing in the dark. The two things that solved it for me, bike tyre tracks and footprints. I had often wondered where Mad Keith the technohermit kept his toilet, another mystery solved then.