Sheep Rescue

Jan 14th, 2017

Sheep Rescue

This morning R and I were doing our usual waterfall walk. It was our day to go to Glasgow so we had to go early so it was still dark – but clear and with a nearly full moon, so that it was light enough to be able to see where we were going. R took a great picture of the moon.

Then when we were part way up the path to the waterfall, I saw a movement in the ditch beside the path. There was a big sheep (not sure if a ewe or a ram but it had big curly horns) slumped in the ditch – it was moving so it wasn’t dead, but it obviously couldn’t run away because they are very skitty around humans. I went down into the ditch to see if there was anything I could do to help and discovered that its back leg was wedged into a hole. Getting ourselves covered in mud, R and I managed to dig the leg out and we were hoping that it would run away at this point. It didn’t, as it was obviously so exhausted with struggling that it had no energy to get out of the ditch. Becoming even more mud covered, I got into the ditch with it and managed to turn it on its front. It looked a bit better at this stage – but nothing R and I could do could induce it to try to jump, and (although we tried) it was just too heavy to bodily lift out. So we had to leave the poor thing and call the farmer, who promised to send men to get it out.

So this morning it had gone – either it had recovered sufficiently to jump out itself once it had been left alone for a while (I’ve noticed animals often do this), or the farmer got it out. I was pretty relieved because I would have been upset to see its body lying there.

So that was our good deed for the day – I had to have a shower and wash all my walking clothes before we went out as both me and them were soaked in freezing mud.

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