Sheep Thoughts

The following article was e-mailed to me.  It is in response to the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in the UK in 2001, but sheds some light onto why humans still find sheep endearing creatures.  I hope you enjoy...

The following story is from an English magazine, the Spectator.
A friend of mine sent it to me and I thought many would enjoy it.


UNTO US A LAMB IS GIVEN
Horatio Clare on the long and happy friendship that existed
between men and sheep before the present slaughter began

By Horatio Clare

SO far this year we have slaughtered and burnt four-and-a-half
million of them; it may not be enough. We are planning to kill or castrate
hundreds of thousands more. The government is awarding itself powers to
destroy any it chooses, and no right of appeal will exist. We have declared
total war on sheep.

A relationship 2,000 years in the making has suddenly soured,
and there is no question who has come off worse: Humans, 4.5 million; Sheep, one
o.g. (A single slaughterman died during the killing, but no sheep was
blamed; rather one Keith Ward, another slaughterman, who denies murder.)

It seems a good moment, perhaps a last chance to look at the
animal on the receiving end of this unprecedented spree of interspecies
violence. You ought at least to know something about these creatures. You are paying
for their destruction (£2 billion in taxes so far this year), and your
great-grandchildren, coming across some antiquated storybook
depicting smiling farmers and patchwork fields, may well ask you what the
white things were.

Historically, the deal between sheep and humans has been very
simple: we fed and looked after them, they fed and looked after us. Ten
thousand years ago Central Asians were wearing sheepskins and fleeces.
Five-and-a-half thousand years ago man learnt how to spin wool. There were small,
primitive sheep in Britain before the Romans arrived. They brought over the large
white things, now known as Cotswolds, which were to revolutionise the British economy.

In the Middle Ages we treasured the sheep. You could eat it,
wear it, write on it (skins to parchment), drink from it, or treat it as a
friendly, self-propelled cheese factory. The mediaeval wool trade boomed
to such an extent that in the 14th century it provided half the Crown’s tax
revenues.  Churches, halls and manors were paid for by sheep. They were our
first international hot seller, and we were not the only nation to benefit.

 
Cortez shipped sheep from Spain to South America, introducing
them to North America in 1519. The success of sheep-farming among the North
American colonists, and the economic power it brought them, enraged the
British government. Amputation was introduced for ‘illegal’ trading.
Resentment at that, and the Stamp Act, led to the Revolutionary War. In the
20th century, 60 per cent of Australia’s exports came off the back of a sheep.

So, although it may look like an ignorant bundle of wool, its ancestors built nations and started revolutions. Perhaps a little respect might be in order?

From the sheep’s point of view, good farmers have been a
blessing. Sure, we have a habit of eating their sons, but we have put millennia of
care into the well being of their daughters. My mother, a hill farmer of
consummate skill, is still amazed at the variety of ways a sheep can find to die.
Even the hardy Welsh mountain breed with which I was brought up are
susceptible to braxy, pulpy kidney, staggers, pneumonia, pasturella, twin lamb
disease, cancer, hypothermia in the winter, maggots in the summer, scab,
scrapie, foxes, crows and dogs.

They push their heads through fences and get stuck (the grass on
the other side really is greener: sheep invented the axiom). They climb
trees to pick at foliage and get hung up by their horns or legs. They fall
down banks, get bitten by snakes and stung by wasps. They tumble into ponds and
streams. They gorge themselves on fallen ash leaves, roll on to their backs
and blow up like balloons. They poison themselves on ragwort. Rams’ horns
regularly grow into their own heads, a lethal variation of the in-growing
toenail. They starve, freeze, get depressed and fall ill, but a good shepherd
can counter every affliction.

This extraordinary vulnerability and tendency to self-destruction made them
the perfect metaphor for man in Christianity. Jesus was the
ultimate Good Shepherd, laying down his life for his flock. Wherever the
metaphor appears in Scripture, love, trust and sacrifice are invoked. Jesus
himself was the Lamb of God. The line of trust and succour from God to Jesus to
man to sheep was comprehensible and logical for 2,000 years; only in our
generation has it lost its force, as the shepherd gave way to the slaughter man.

The metaphor for humans is not as unflattering as it might
appear. Every sheep has a distinct character. For each fearful and stupid
animal, there is a curious and affectionate one. Every flock has its leaders:
while the rest panic at the appearance of humans and dogs, the leaders work out
what you want them to do, and, if it seems safe, they do it. Their
confidence inspires the rest.

Although no one has ever claimed that sheep are intelligent
animals, neither are they fools. Some seem predisposed to stray. Once they learn
that fences can be surmounted by jumping or crawling, they are unstoppable.
Strays lead independent lives, rearing their lambs on the run. Incidents of
sheep learning to roll across cattle-grids are famously well documented.

They can be very playful. Lambs run races along the edges of
fields. They love to compete for King of the Castle: any ant-heap will do. My
mother had a yearling (a one-year-old) which had the habit of climbing on to
the daily hay bale, apparently for the hell of it. She was evidently a joker,
as most lambs pass through the playful phase and enter a rather solemn period,
when they eschew games.

When newly shorn or dashing through a gate into fresh pasture,
young sheep literally jump for joy, springing into the air like pot-bellied
antelopes. They form strong attachments: best friends will stick together
and remember each other, seeking each other out after periods of separation.

Scientists have recently ‘revealed’ that sheep can remember the
faces of up to 50 other sheep, as well as their shepherd’s mug. This will
not come as much of a surprise to sheep or shepherds, who have known it for
centuries. ‘Sheep must potentially be able to think about individuals that
are absent from their environment,’ says Dr Keith Kendrick of the Babraham
Institute, Cambridge. It’s a fact, Dr Keith. When you wean lambs from ewes,
both mothers and children cry for days. Their memories last for at least two
years, according to the scientists; rather longer than some humans.

The telling phrase in the Babraham report, published in Nature,
is that the test-sheep were trained to recognize pairs of faces ‘using a
food reward.  Sheep, as the researchers have discovered, will do absolutely
anything for food.

Their emotional sympathy is extraordinary. Sheep sense human
anger or frustration and try to flee. Good shepherds move calmly and
slowly among their flocks, and talk to them. Sheep will answer. The
ubiquitous bleat of the hungry sheep is only one of many communications. There are
cries of distress, which any shepherd will recognize; whickering,
affectionate noises to reassure lambs. There are curious, interrogative grunts;
whistles of alarm or hostility, and groans of pain when giving birth.

Anyone who thinks that sheep are cowards has never tried to
capture a full-grown ram for a spot of horn-shortening. A ewe will face
down dogs or foxes when defending a lamb, which is astonishingly courageous,
considering her complete lack of weaponry. And there is absolutely no doubt
that they know when death is upon them. When they believe all is lost,
lambs go completely limp in the hand.

So when Elliot Morley, the euphemistically titled minister for
animal health, announces another round of slaughter, spare a thought for the
victims. As the slaughter man closes in, and the faces of their 50 friends flash
before their eyes, the last face may well be that of the shepherd,
accompanied by a mournful question-mark. Where we used to cure, we now kill. It
is a perverse end to a beautiful friendship.