Esther’s Escapades

Retired vet and author of ‘Pets Aplenty’ MALCOLM D.

WELSHMAN on the case of a home-loving sheep

By MALCOLM D. WELSHMAN

The smell of roast lamb was wafting from the kitchen one Sunday when it was suddenly joined by a chorus of baas and the crash of chairs tumbling to the floor. It sounded as someone was wrecking the joint – and I’m not talking roast here.

‘What the heck?’

I raced through to find a sheep staring at me from behind the breakfast bar. Fifty or so others were crowded round the open back door, all trying to push in.

‘Esther. It could only be you,’ I exclaimed. She gave me a bright yelloweyed stare and wagged her tail. A pile of droppings showered onto the floor.

‘So sorry,’ apologised Chris Martin when summoned to collect the sheep and herd them back to his adjoining farm.

‘It’s just that Esther, being hand-reared, thinks home is a warm kitchen and an Aga. She’s always escaping. And completely ignores Jack.’ He nodded at his Collie who’d done a good job in rounding up the flock from my herbaceous border. to chew over. The second an expanse of lawn to mow –liberally fertilised in the process. And the third, blocks of ornamental grasses and bonsai trees to be stripped bare - so adding to the minimalist nature of the plot.

Esther was not with them. Oh no. She’d skedaddled round the corner - perhaps sensing that the roast-lamb smell was too close to home for comfort. She was now methodically stripping my favourite rose of its new spring growth.

However, it seems that as her tongue curled round the last clump of ornamental grass in that garden, a large Alsatian appeared who saw her more as lamb chops than a woolly friend.

‘She’s been badly mauled,’ said Chris, hauling her out of his Land Rover.

Between us, we carried Esther into my surgery where she lay on the consulting table, her yellow eyes glazed, her chest heaving like bellows. Very shocked.

Her Houdini capabilities grew in line with her quest to seek pastures new. The three bungalows bordering Chris’s farm were good examples of her expertise. Each had a long back garden, each with a different lay-out.

Esther decided all three were worth exploring.

The first gave her neat rows of spinach, cabbage and sprouts

‘Don’t hold out much chance for her,’ I said as I got to work, stitching up the large gash in her flank. But this was Esther we were talking about. There was no holding this sheep down for long. And sure enough, she was up on her trotters in no time.

The next thing I knew she’d trotted over a main road, down a track to a disused gravel pit, lost her footing and toppled in.