Sheep may safely graze
Ahh poor Fiona the lonely sheep stranded at the bottom of a cliff has been rescued at last.
The sheep, called Fiona and wearing a huge fleece, had been stranded at the foot of cliffs on the Cromarty Firth for at least two years, with an animal welfare charity having deemed rescue attempts “incredibly complex”.
But five farmers managed to haul her up a steep slope, and now plan to deliver her to a farm park.
A real farm park, not the pretend kind kids are told about when Flopsy dies in the night.
Jillian Turner first spotted the sheep two years ago while she was paddling along the coast of Sutherland with her kayak club. She assumed the sheep would make it back to wherever home was by itself and thought no more of it.
When she took the same journey again recently she was horrified to see the same animal.
Recalling her first sighting of the sheep, Turner told the Northern Times: “About half a mile before turning into the Cromarty Firth we spotted a sheep on a shingle beach at the bottom of some steep, rocky coastline.
“She saw us coming and was calling to us along the length of the beach following our progress until she could go no further. She finally turned back, looking defeated.”
The sighting made an impression on Turner and she couldn’t quite believe it when she saw the same sheep on the recent trip.
“She called out on our approach and once again followed the group along the shore jumping from rock to rock, calling to us the whole way,” Turner said.
The sheep’s fleece was “huge” and touching the ground at the back, she said, with Turner describing the experience as “heart-rending”.
“We honestly thought she might make her way back up that first year. The poor ewe has been on her own for at least two years. For a flock animal that has to be torture, and she seemed desperate to make contact with us on the two occasions we’ve gone past her.”
And now she’s saved. Well done, five guys.
And now the beautiful adagio by J.S. Bach is running through my mind.
Ya I love it.
Ah, that Bach! It is wonderful! (I am supposing you are referring to ‘Sheep may safely graze’).
There is also Handel’s ‘All we like sheep have gone astray-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay….’
I like also the account of the sheep’s appeals for help. Having spent some time as an under-shepherd in Wales in my youth, I can safely say that, despite prejudice to the contrary, sheep are not unintelligent creatures.
Oh, I missed Ophelia’s title. of course it is ‘Sheep may safely graze’.
The poor sheep calling for help makes me get all damp around the eyes.
The enormous heavy fleece is now off her.
With that heavy fleece, the sheep was lucky not to have become ‘cast’ – unable to get up and dying of starvation. In the Yorkshire Dales, there is the wonderful word ‘riggwelter’ (deriving from Old Norse) for ‘cast’.
You’re a good bean, Ophelia.
Now some Animal Rights Activists are taking issue about the sheep’s ultimate destiny.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/05/ordeal-of-britains-loneliest-sheep-continues-as-activists-accused-of-intimidating-farm-staff
A rescue story always raises the spirits when the international news is so bad.
Six “animal rights activists” – one of whom, the one who does the talking, has pieces of metal piercing her septum and lower lip.
It’s so stupid. Fiona isn’t going to be slaughtered for food, she’s going to live on a farm where visitors are invited to socialize with the animals. I don’t think the farmers are going to be zapping Fiona with a cattle prod to force her to chat with the visitors, so what’s the problem?
It’s the same with dogs and cats. Animal activists seem to want them to run free, never recognizing that a species so domesticated doesn’t necessarily want to run free, other than with the limited scope of knowing their food bowl will be waiting when they get back. They were selected by humans to live with humans. Domesticated sheep are sort of the same; they are no longer adapted to living in the wild.
As for letting cats and dogs loose, or saving alley cats to keep them wild, that does so much damage to the native animal population. Have cats and dogs if you will, but they are better held as house pets, even if it seems cruel t PETA. Don’t decimate the local populations.
And sheep do have needs that are better met in human farms.
The “activists” in question (I watched a clip of them yesterday) want her to go to a “sanctuary” but it looks to me as if Dalscone is a sanctuary.
I watched part of a long video one of the Dalscone farmers did this morning, in the pen with Fiona, and the vet sitting on a hay bale next to her. In the next pen over, in the background at first and then getting full attention, a ewe with two lambs who were born last night. These are not people who mistreat their animals.
Anyway Fiona’s there now, so it’s a fait accompli. Animals Rising should go rise somewhere else.
The usual fate for a domesticated sheep is ultimately to be a doner kebab.
These sorts of outdoor centres have rare breeds for people to look at. They usually have plenty of space and herd animals have companions.
Animal activists should stick to factory farming.
The first 3 panels of this are relevant to the comments about ‘animal rights activists’.
https://zules.com/exvulnerum/comic.php?page=338
@iknlast I have to say that the domestic cat who hangs out at my place partakes of his wild nature. He’s not my cat – he’s a visitor – and with humans he is so purry and strokey that he has them eating out of his paws. Then you see him outside, snatching at a mouse, and this morning, I am sorry to say, I heard cheeping and he was swallowing a small bird – a blue tit I think. As well as a hunter, he is a warrior, a rather elderly one, who was once king of the territory but is now attacked by usurpers and pretenders and has occasional chunks bitten out of him.
It would be a cruelty to confine him altogether. The fascination of such creatures is that they live partly dozing in safety with human protectors, and partly in the natural state of alertness to danger. I suppose we must have lived like that once, threatened by violence within our own tribe or the neighbouring tribe, and by our own predators, as we predated ourselves.
Animal Rising is saying any bullshit to make farming and farmers look bad. The real story must include the landowner (who owns the land with the cliff where Fiona got stuck) and the sheep-owning farmer (who owns the flock of sheep that Fiona was separated from).
Cammy Wilson led the 5-man crew that saved Fiona. Wilson is a retired police officer who took up sheep farming and made a web site, a YouTube channel, and a Facebook page called The Sheep Game. Wilson is protecting the identity of the farmer, for example (bolding mine):
Another source reported,
So Animal Rising is bullshitting when they say they had a deal with the landowner to rescue the sheep, and that the landowner broke a deal.
Good stuff. Thank you Dave.
Farmers do normally care about losing their livestock, and they do try and rescue them when they’re in danger.
Also I can’t see any country person giving a deal to (presumably) urban activists. Country people have a mild contempt for townies at best.
After a serious study (without peer review) of my wife’s little bad-tempered little Maltese-Shitsu cross dog name of ‘Normie’ (and said with emphasis on the shit, as in ‘I’ll sue the shit who bred him’) I am convinced that the default state of animals, particularly those in the wild, is total paranoia. Some kind of carnivore could be lurking behind each tree, rock or other cover, so they are permanently on guard. A corollary: no wild animal ever dies of ‘old age;’ not even the majestic African lion, who eventually gets rendered unable to keep up with the pride, keeps taking long rests lying on the ground, and watches the pack of hyaenas as it gathers around, waiting to move in for the kill.
So, us farmers offer our livestock a take it or take it deal. We will protect you from predators, feed you all the feed we can grow or afford to buy in, watch over you and provide you with a barn, shed or facility as best we can, especially to shelter pregnant females among you when giving birth, and at the end of a life likely far longer than would be possible for you in the wild, we will give you as painless a death as we can arrange. (If an animal is tense prior to slaughter, it means that tougher meat comes out of the abattoir.)
An animal rights activist friend of ours is a vegan, as is my cattle-farming wife. (She was born to it and knows far more about it than I do.) I once asked our vegan friend what she would do if she saw that her beloved cat had caught a mouse, and was playing with it prior to eating it, as cats incline to do. Her instant response; she would rescue the mouse, and turn it loose.
My conclusion: the more vegans there are like her, the closer the world will move towards being totally over-run with all kinds of vermin; called ‘varmints’ in America I believe.