h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In my youth I was a sheep famer of sorts due to my father's insistance on owning a tax-evading hobby farm.

My list:

1) As far as I know the ewe is the only mother that will wander away from it's lamb if it doesn't *bond* with it right away. Often that bonding is nothing more than seeing it, but if it doesn't it will wander off leaving it's progeny to death by starvation. A regular occurence at lambing time was rubbing the lamb with the mother's scent in order for it to rediscover it's child.

2) Sheep will actually eat themselves to death if given the opportunity. If one gets into a feed room it will often do so.

3) I forget the medical term, but sheep can eat the wrong food (usually wet barly) until they explode from the gasses it produces in their stomach.

4) In a wet climate sheep's feet will actually rot unless treated with a sulphur compound. Alternately if they don't have stones to walk on or have their hooves clipped, their hooves will curl around under their feet and penetrate the flesh, thus causing infection. If too rocky a footing is provided the hooves will wear away to nothing and the feet will get- you guessed it- infected.

Just a small list, I could come up with more if pressed, but the memories are too painfull.


Incidentally I don't eat any mammal meat (don't ask) but the one smell I find hard to resist is roast lamb. I guess it is just wishfull thinking....

!!!

OK, OK! Not *all* sheep, just Southdowns....and Suffolks...and Dorset....

Hmph

You mean there are herbivores which make cows seem like Oxford Dons in comparison?

Cows must be smarter, they tilt their heads to the side when gawking in wonder. What an amazing world.

SC

They're just deep thinkers, surely?

Once again I must protest you calling me Shirley.....but no.

Look, if Shirley's bothering you . . . But no, I must insist: sheep may appear stupid - all right, do appear stupid - but if we assume they're caught in the midst of some ontological dilemma that's occupying the majority of their brains (if a tree is cut down in a forest and there's no one there to hear it except a sheep and that sheep attempts to applaud with only one limb, does the sheep fall over noselessly or not - you know the sort of thing), that would surely explain their ongoing neglect of their own physical wellbeing.

I'm sort of partial to Wendy or Sir Raymond Luxury Yacht III, actually.

Perhaps the grand scheme of things includes bovines, then? The great hidden mind of Gaia is made up of all the sheep and cows in the world quietly (well, mostly quietly) working out all the conundrums and philosophical problems. That would explain the tilting of the head, the endless staring into space, and the deep soulfull eyes, I guess.

Unless it's just gas.....

The sloth - now there's a thoughtful animal. So thoughtful, in fact, that it allows moss to grow on its own body. Probably considers sheep a bit flighty

Sheep flighty....so you are talking about a dead sloth here, then?

The difference between a live sloth and a dead sloth is a very subtle one and chiefly of interest only to other sloths. Whether it is of interest to the sloth itself brings me back to the idea of the sloth as prince among philosophical animals: neither herbivorous nor omnivorous so much as pensivorous, given over entirely to the life of the mind.

It must be a vegetarian for three main reasons: One, it thinks a great deal and only a thinking being would not eat another thinking being. Two, it lives in trees and leaves would be in abundance. Three, it is too damn slow to catch an animal.

"(if a tree is cut down in a forest and there's no one there to hear it except a sheep and that sheep attempts to applaud with only one limb, does the sheep fall over noselessly or not - you know the sort of thing)"

This flight of philosophy raises the question: If I and a sheep were both looking at a tree, what would the sheep see?


"Three, it is too damn slow to catch an animal."

You're assuming that it's fast enough to catch a leaf.....

SC

The sheep would see the tree and you looking at the tree. However, if the sheep were on the other side of the tree, it would only see the tree and so would you. Would the sheep be there in that case? Would you? Does the sheep validate your existence and vice versa?

Sloths are just about quick enough to catch leaves, but a lot depends on how old they are when they set out.

(I'm new and not on to the smileys yet, but would a sloth be out of the question?)

Don't start me. One summer holiday I worked on a farm....

We have to move a flock of from a field, down a road 30 yards, and into another field.

So open the gate - which blocks the lane, and forces the to move in the right direction. Open the other gate and put a barrier across the lane. Said lane has hedges 8 feet high. What can go wrong ?

Firstly a does not see an 8 foot high hedge as a barrier, rather than make a 90 degree right turn a will hurl itself at the hedge reaching the rather surprising height of 6 feet. If you've ever been hit in the face by a you'll know they are not soft and fluffly, they are hard and smelly.

Secondly a will suddenly plonk its foot down on yours, and leave it there.

for no reason known to man will suddenly leap vertically 4 feet upwards - DO NOT BE UNDERNEATH THEM WHEN THEY COME DOWN.

When threatened approximately 30% of the flock will run towards the danger. When the danger is some moron beeping his horn, and you're the man on the bottom gate.........

8 foot high, now that is impressive. I wish I could have seen that.
Did you know that the Welsh have invented a new use for sheep.


Wool.


Apologies in advance.

Ahhhhhh. Sheep jokes....

Hmmmm.

*Honest, your honour I was just helping the poor thing over the fence!*

Why are so many sheep farms on top of a cliff? They tend to push back.....

The little pockets on the front of the Wellies? For the back legs of course...


(My apologies as well...)

I once had a friend whose family owned a sheep farm, and she always used to remark how insulting and yet appropriate the Bible's references to people being sheep was...
According to her, the most annoying thing a sheep could do was decide to die. Apparently, on her farm, a good number of the sheep would sit in a corner of the field and stubbornly will themselves to death.

I had forgotten this delightful thread!



BTW, I now eat meat.

Guess what I have in my freezer?

(No points for ice cubes or frost).