Thursday, February 08, 2007

A SHAGGY SHEEP

A SHAGGY SHEEP

Aside.

Do you remember that film where Peter Sellars played Inspector Clouseau and he was sleuthing in a hotel?  He walked up to the hotel proprietor who was standing by a dog and asked

‘Does your dog bite?’  in that hysterical French accent.

‘No.’ the proprietor replied, where upon the Inspector (that is Sellars) advanced towards the dog who immediately attacked and bit him.

Sellars –that is Inspector Clouseau - then berated the hotel proprietor for having said his dog does not bite and the hotel proprietor, in deathless prose   and in an even more hysterical accent  said,
.
‘That is not my dog!’

The Sussex branch of the family suffers from time to time from marauding sheep.  Recently one had to be rescued from the gated swimming pool.  A quick phone call to the farmer, the strays are collected and all is well.  The latest one however was more of a problem and managed to break a window.  The farmer was called; he turned up, caught the intruder and said.

‘That’s not my sheep!’

This one had come from way, way over the Sussex Downs.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Farting in the lift is the best bit.

Have you a rheeuuuum?

Daphne Wayne-Bough said...

Did you know 8% of rams were gay? No wonder ewes prefer farmers.

Nice cottage BTW, very Dibley.

test fish said...

a marauding sheep caught in the act of a bungled home invasion!
that certainly puts my "the neighbourhood cats are loitering about in my backyard again" problems into perspective...

although...
there was that one time the cat from across the street kicked a bloody great hole in the front door's security mesh...

Z said...

Friends of ours had a cow in their swimming pool a couple of years ago. It was not easy to haul her out either.

People ring us when they see cows in the road - it's all right if it's one of the ones from our field, they are very good and will follow us home if we wave a handful of hay or an apple at them. Other farmers' cows are less biddable.

Not our cows, just our field. Our farmer friend sends his pregnant girls here for a holiday.

Pat said...

Andrewm: f-ing in a lift or any enclosed space should be a punishable offence with possible exceptions for 70+ yr olds. Surprised to find other's have played Clouseau. The odd thing is I never saw the whole film- just the classic bits. Got a nice smile form P Sellars though.

Daphne: I learn something new every day. Sadly it's forgottn by the next day. The cottage puts a smile on my
face.

Amy: that sounds like some cat. You do have some scary creatures in Oz IRL (just showing off!) I think.

Z: it's all so rural. Been enjoying a safari prog BBC2 6pm and decided that all animals permeate a lovely peaceful atmosphere. we just have birds to watch- hills, trees and a glimpse of sea.

test fish said...

i don't know that the across-the-street-cat is scary... just very determined!
don't know why, though -- it seems well fed, and all my girls have had 'the chop'.


ewes prefer happy farmers: there's research, and everything.
(see also lesbian cows, sheep pining for absent friends, cows bearing grudges, and cows with regional accents.)
part of me thinks this kind of research is cute... but part of me also finds it all a bit exasperating -- goodness! you mean social species' with learned behaviours might form social attachments? and not always learn the same exact thing from different individuals and environments? you mean they're not all identical and insensate automata? what a shock!
(finding them in the swimming pool, though, or in the act of a B&E... that would be a shock!)
it's a kind of research that always puts me in mind of Douglas Adams' MISPWOSO (The MaxiMegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious).
Douglas Adams was brilliant.

Pat said...

amy: your links had me boggling. It really is a mad world and scientists the maddest of all. Fancy being married to one. Oh I was and am! You really are a wow at html. Does it come easy to you?

FOUR DINNERS said...

I nearly said "I have experience with sheep" but that could be misinterpreted. Oh...I've said it...

Having worked on a farm as a kid I can say without fear of contradiction that sheep can be amazingly aggressive - especially when protecting lambs and not necessarily their own.

Dug 'em out of snowdrifts many a time. Usually only the head showing. On one classic occasion only the legs. It was still alive if a little chilly.

Pat said...

4d: I remember reading about it. Like all your stories - hilarious!

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

Did Daphne make that up, do you think, or it's true? :-D

Here, when people's chicken steal veggies in gardens, all of a sudden nobody owns them.

Pat said...

GG: Daphne is very knowledgeable and I suspect it is true. Amy's links has some amazing stuff also. Hope you escapr this wretched bird 'flu.

apprentice said...

I wonder if the farmer's denial was in direct proportion to the damage done?

I like sheep, I love their ability to jump up vertically like Harriers, especially just as you're trying to pen them.

Pat said...

apprentice: I never thought of that. He did take the sheep after all. Crafty b----r!

SpanishGoth said...

Prefer ewes to rams. My grandfather was a shepherd for 40 years after the war and was explaining about how dangerous rams were when he spotted that some incosiderate twit had left a gate open.

A shrieking "bloody hell - run" was enough to shift me into top gear toward the nearest fence which I cleared with a headlong dive. Grandpas was quite as aesthetically pleasing but he did land a lot further than me thanks to the rams horns catching him full in the buttocks at full tilt. Wow, I thought as he passed overhead - my grandpa can fly.

Didn't do much sitting down for the next couple of days though...

Pat said...

Hi SGoth and welcome! That's a lovely story - to read - not so lovely to experience. Your grandad must have benn great to have around.

test fish said...

if i was stranded on a desert island (or on someone else's computer, which feels like much the same thing), i would be able to HTML to save my life! i'm terrible at it! but i have my 'cheat-sheet', a list of HTML code-bits and what they do, so i can just cut-and-paste what i need when i need it. very handy. every now and then i take it into my head to do something that's not on the list yet (like the ".....read more?" links i've started using), and that usually involves a bit of googling to find someone else who's figured it out, and then a bit of trial-and-error with lots of stuff-ups along the way to get it to actually work.
for me, the trick with HTML was realising that i don't actually need to understand it to be able to use it, i just need to not accidentally delete my cheat-sheet! which is just as well, because trying to understand it just gave me a headache, and left me feeling stupid and defeated.

Pat said...

amy: that cheat list sounds like it would make a great post!

test fish said...

i can't post the code because the computer just uses the code instead of showing it! but i could email it to you, if you'd like?

Pat said...

Amy: many thanks for the offer. I find I've got a file on blogger help which I haven't bothered to look at. When I hav a minute i'll see if I can understand it and get back to you if I can't.