Listen to this articleThe road to an Easter basket is fraught with danger and excitement.
It’s Easter week and there are endless scenes with cute little children hunting for Easter eggs and chasing baby sheep in a grassy meadow with flowers blooming all over the place, trying to sell laundry detergent. In our culture, sheep are given a pure and delightsome image and are made out to be idyllic, innocent, godly creatures. By the authority of my holy beehive hair and the sisterhood of the flashing breasticles, I’m here to bear my testimony to you, that nothing can be further from the truth. Sheep are not innocent! Sheep are not godly! Sheep are the most sinister, foul, obnoxious, disgusting creatures placed on this planet! And the stench… ooohhhhh the stench!
When I was a young impressionable princess in training, many many facelifts ago, during the Cretaceous Period, growing up on the family farm in Idaho, (yes, I am an Ida-Homo) we had five thousand sheep. One of my chores was to help herd the disgusting recalcitrant sheep about two miles from the summer grazing pasture across some railroad tracks to a feedlot corral adjacent to our house. All the while I would sing softly to myself, ♪“Pioneer drag queens sang as they walked and walked and walked…”♪
On one occasion as the “sweaters on the hoof” were crossing the train tracks, I noticed in the distance that a freight train was quickly approaching. I quickly tried to herd the “future gyros” off the tracks. Unfortunately, the approaching train was traveling very quickly, and it became readily apparent that I would not be able to get them all across before the train reached us.
As the train arrived, half of the herd was on the east side of the tracks and the other half was on the west side of the tracks. When the locomotive passed by, the engineer, probably trying to be helpful, blew the loud horn as the train reached us. The sheep were frightened by the noise and movement of the train speeding between them. A couple of the sheep, in the fear and panic at the noise and confusion, could see between the passing train cars the other sheep on the far side of the tracks. They jumped right into the speeding train, trying to join the others on the far side of the track, to their untimely demise. Now let me tell you, there is one unbending and eternal truth about “mindless mutton monsters.” SHEEP FOLLOW EACH OTHER!
Despite my best efforts in attempting to shoo them to safety by waving my sequin-covered cape at them, in their panic and alarm, a large part of the herd began to follow the leaders, also jumping into the moving train, knocking me down and trampling me in the process. At this point, all I could do was curl up in the fetal position and try and cover my head with my arms and cape to attempt to protect me from their hooves. Here’s an F.Y.I. — sheep hooves are surprisingly sharp, especially when they use your body as a leaping-off point. And another F.Y.I. — in all the panic, ALL OF THE SHEEP SHIT! Blood and guts and sheep shit began to rain down upon me as lamb chops and woolen fleece began flying everywhere.
The noise of the passing train, my yelling, and the sheep screaming in fear and pain, the downpour of blood and guts was all just like in a movie. It was such a spectacle of bloody devastation and carnage that it could easily have given the opening scene in “Saving Private Ryan” a run for its money. There were body parts and guts hanging from the fences, and the weeds were drenched in blood.
The vomitous stench of sheep shit, blood, and guts was overpowering. Despite my refined princess training, I hurled, and my lunch made an encore appearance (in a most delicate and refined way I’m sure). I believe that at least 150 sheep returned to the great pasture in the sky that fateful day.
After the train had passed by, my father and grandfather, having witnessed the carnage from the far side of the field, sped in the pickup truck to the scene, crossing the fields, unsafely over ditches and burrow pits as quickly as possible, becoming airborne a couple of times and nearly breaking an axel in the process. They found me lying in a puddle of blood, vomit, guts, and shit. After they determined that I was alive, and mostly in one piece, we gathered up the remaining living wooly wonders and, covered in blood and shit, herded them the rest of the way home. I’m pretty sure I looked like I was from The Walking Dead.
My grandfather, being a very practical man, called the radio station and asked them to announce that the residents of the county should bring knives, saws, and hatchets and come salvage some free meat. The scene resembled Blitzkrieg survivors searching for victims after a bombing raid. That was the last time we herded the sheep across the tracks. After that, we loaded them onto large sheep hauling trucks to make future journeys.
Like always, these events leave us with several eternal questions:
- In memoriam or possibly revenge, should I only wear woolen dresses?
- Is the wearing of sheep’s blood where I got my love of red lipstick?
- Would it be proper to share this story every time someone talks about the lost sheep in church?
- Should I have incorporated tasers into my breasticles to be able to stun the sheep?
- Would it be acceptable to use the breasticle tasers on possible reluctant and evasive boyfriends?
- What kind of perfume best covers sheep shit?
These and other important questions to be answered in future chapters of: The Perils of Petunia Pap-Smear
