December 3, 2021
Breeding season for our sheep is coming to an end, and I for one will be deliriously happy to be done with this ram. He is conniving, aggressive, and I never seem to hear him coming. He innocently eats his hay as I walk past him, and only when I have my back to him does he run at me, leaping into the air and hitting me full speed in the middle of my back.
Since I can’t trust him, I spend all my time in the pasture either walking backwards, which is extremely challenging, or constantly looking over my shoulder. When Anne is with me, she stands as “look-out” while I distribute the hay. As soon as he starts to run towards me, she yells “incoming!” When I turn to face him, he backs down demurely and goes back to eating hay.
Despite my best efforts, he’s managed to ambush me on three separate occasions. It’s painful but more than that it’s startling and sends my adrenaline into instant fight or flight mode. The last time he got me, I was so enraged I grab him by the horns and let loose with a string of expletives, interspersed with every lamb dish I could think of. Eventually though the adrenaline wore off and it dawned on me that I was standing directly in front of our livestreaming sheep camera. Oops.
Most of our rams have qualified as truly obnoxious but they are rarely this bad. I’ve ordered a bell and collar for next year’s ram to wear so no matter what, at least I will hear him coming.
Historically, shepherds put a bell on the leader of the flock so even in the dark it’s easy to monitor them. A fast-moving bell might indicate the flock was being chased by a predator. A distant bell let the shepherd know the flock was moving further and further away, and the ringing made it relatively easy to locate the wayward sheep. The leader of the flock was often a castrated ram, called a “wether,” and the term “bellwether” came to mean an indicator or trend setter.
Our ram is “intact” so clearly a new name for our bell will be needed. I’m thinking “Rambo’s Rambell” or the “Jerkometer.”
As much as I am looking forward to lambs in the Spring, and appreciate our ram’s contribution to that, I’m equally looking forward to the end of his reign. How nice it will be to spend time once again with my girls, free of danger, in our normally very peaceful pasture. I have to believe they all will feel the same.