The Great Escape

Panic, fear, “oh this could be bad” thoughts and a surge of energy consumed me.  I fought every urge to call Todd to make it his problem but focused hard on a solution. Tim, son of Marty and a hay farmer too, had just rung the doorbell to ask if I knew that all our sheep were outside the fencing and over in the adjoining field. I bolted for the garage, loaded up two round shallow bowls with grain, headed to the door, and stopped. Put the bowls down, ran back into the house to grab the remote control wand that turns the electric fencing off, shoved it in my Carhartt vest pocket, retrieved the heavy bowls and headed for the West field gate, no sheep in sight.

Moving down the slope wearing sneakers I should have swapped out for boots but didn’t because I didn’t want to lose any time despite knowing they’d be schmeared in sheep poo and thinking, “so what. I’m surrounded by sheep shit, who cares. In fact, where do I go these days that it would matter? How hard would it be to hopscotch my way down around the small piles of dung?”  Harder than I thought. I wasn’t a third of the way through the field before my left foot sunk deep into a soft pile. (Kind Reader, get over any “eeyoo” thoughts. Thirty-six girls and lambs are a mighty mother nature’s factory of turd.)  In short, my thoughts were keeping me from the crisis at hand. Where were the sheep and what’s going to go wrong with this picture.

Our fields are at the tail end of grass to eat.  To squeeze out a little more time on the land before shifting to hay, a few days ago Todd had set up a portable electric fenced-in section outside the bottom of the permanent west field.  Somehow that had been compromised.  As I got close to the bottom gate, still inside the permanent fencing, I saw one sheep, Hillary, who looked at me as if to say, “I know. Idiots. They shouldn’t be out there.”

“Please stay put and don’t follow me, okay?”  I said as I passed her holding the bowls of grain high.  I went through the gate and saw for the first time that the portable fencing had somehow been pulled back, offering a wide open door to the neighbor’s field of short, but very green virgin grass.  “Ladies!” I called out as I slapped the side of the stacked plastic bowls with my wedding ring.  “Ladies what the heck are you doing?”  As I walked threw a swale and began to rise up the neighbor’s low ridge I saw all the sheep spread across the enormous hill.  I pounded the side of the plastic bowls and scanned the field to see if any of the sheep could hear the dull thwapping sound. Martha’s head snapped up and my Alpha girl, my savior, stood still, looking straight at me. “Martha, you know you don’t belong there” I said in a slightly calmer voice.  She knew my voice, but she really knew the sound of an offer of grain.  She moved toward me and I started walking backward, tap, tap tapping the side of the bowl, calling out, “come on now, come on now.” And here’s what I have come to understand about sheep.  If one moves, they all tend to move, especially if Martha is leading. They don’t all buy into the new direction. A few have to think about it for a moment or two, but I kept walking backward. And then I saw Tim behind the wheel of his Gator driving fast across the field.  He had ditched his truck, jumped in the farmer’s version of an ATV and was in the field behind all the sheep like a mechanical sheep dog pushing them my way.  

From start to finish I had the all the sheep back in the West field behind the permanent fencing in under fifteen minutes. A grin across my face, my shoes covered in shit, I headed back to the house a notch more confident.

Late in the afternoon I saw Tim’s truck down by the giant red barn and headed down to thank him.  He didn’t know how the fencing had come open, but he did tell me he saw a huge male coyote the last two nights and with that thought, my confidence evaporated. 

Peggy