by feathers

Created on: May 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

It seemed like a great idea at the time. We had a whole acre of garden and really not much inclination to do anything constructive. Why not get a sheep? It would mean hubby didn't have to spend all summer cutting grass on our steep and rocky block. It would mean the peaceful sound of an occasional "baa" instead of hours of the mower roaring. I could dust off my old spinning wheel and spin the fleece into beautiful hand made creations. Why hadn't we done it years ago?

We bought this 1 year old Merino/Border Leicester ewe and loaded her into the back of our car. She looked at us in the rear-vision mirror and joined in the conversation when we talked to her. We called her Stella.

She seemed a little shy at first. We'd go and look at her and she'd stand there, looking back at us. "Eat the grass, Stella," we'd tell her. And Stella would stare.

A week, two weeks went by and Stella began to get used to us. She was no longer intimidated by the dog and began chasing her. She would come up to us when we went into the yard, in case we had a bit of bread for her to eat. The grass was getting shorter.

Then Stella discovered that grass wasn't the only good thing to eat. She also liked the taste of roses and daisies. She ate the lavender bush and the lilac and she ate the rosemary bush down to a twig. She ate the grass down to soil level and tasted the wattle tree hanging over from the neighbour's yard.

Unlike us, our neighbour was devoted to his garden. The day he moved in to his house he was out there, after dark, digging garden beds and planting things. There were lots of tasty things hanging over that fence. Stella had pretty much taken care of everything on our side of the fence, and her daily ration of Lucerne hay just wasn't doing it for her, so she trimmed and trimmed the plants along the fence line. She stood on the fence, her sharp little hooves ripping the wire, and she shoved her head through the holes she'd made.

I was getting ready to go out to dinner when the phone call came from Pam, next door. Lucky for me our neighbours are so good natured, she chuckled as she told me our sheep was over visiting.

I rushed out without even having time to tell the kids to call their dad. All I could think was that I had to get Stella out of Pam's garden before she laid waste to it.

I tried very hard to explain to Stella that all she had to do was go back through the hole in the fence and all would be well. She looked at me dubiously, trotted over to the fence, and then decided that

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