With all due respect
(or something like that)
If you've ever seen the 1997 Dreamworks film Mouse Hunt, with that hilarious opening that takes place at a funeral, and things go downhill, or rather down the sewer, from there...
We took care of Shaun the Sheep's remains today, in spite of single digit temperatures and ground that was literally as hard as iron. We both tested with a pickaxe but gave up on that idea. The vet, a sheep-keeping neighbor, and the agricultural extension service all recommended composting as the best way to eliminate the corporeal evidence as it were. Seriously, there's no disrespect here. We loved Shaun, but he doesn't need what he left behind, and neither do we. The alternative, turning him into dog food, seemed much too distasteful, not to mention messy.
So the vet put the sheepie to sleep Friday afternoon. It took a dose large enough for a cow, he said. Shaun was tough, but rams usually are. It was too late to do anything by then, already getting dark, so we left him to lie in state on his straw bed overnight. Once the temperatures got out of the negative range (F) we went to see what could be done. Gary prepared a spot at the edge of our old, very large, compost heap. Even that was frozen rock solid just above ground level, but it's deep enough to cover a sheep anyway. We took the wheelbarrow to serve as our hearse and went to pick up the deceased. Both of us expected him to be frozen stiff after 16 hours of subzero, but he was still flexible... and well-inflated. Ruminants. Of course, those busy bacteria who break down cellulose hadn't got the message yet. Poor Shaun was tight as, well, a balloon if not a tick. Popping him seemed too disrespectful so I didn't propose it. We took him at face value. Well, nearly. It seems even a dead sheep can exhibit flatulence. When we picked him up he farted. Loudly, and malodorously. There was still plenty of gas to keep him inflated though. One almost suspected that in a few more hours he would have drifted away like an errant balloon.
Anyway, we got him to his resting place, placed him in as reposeful a position as possible, and buried him, piling four feet of earth, compost, and manure over him. We'll keep adding to that for a while, more or less daily. The experts say he will have completely broken down in about a year, without any mess or odor. We'll see.
We went back indoors for a hot drink before doing our other chores for the evening. I wondered idly just how long those bacteria would keep working. It must be that the reason he was still limp was the heat generated by the bacterial processing still going on inside him. Otherwise he surely would have frozen up overnight. Soon we were both laughing at the idea of a gas explosion under the compost heap. A "volcano" of sheep manure, as it were. Maybe we really should have popped him first, but what's done is done. Besides, a good laugh helped to get rid of the melancholy air. I'm sure Shaun doesn't mind, wherever he is.
When I went back out to feed everyone and bed them down, I found myself examining the remaining sheep. After previous mortalities, and some given away, we have eight left. All but one of those are Shaun's offspring. Oddly, only a couple of them resemble him much in facial appearance, and both of them are black rather than white. The rest, and especially the wethers, look more like miniature versions of their maternal grandsire, Goose. He was a Finnsheep, white, with a bald patch on top of his head, and quite large. They aren't large, but they all have the bald patch and the sugar bowl haircut or tonsure around it (sort of like Moe of the Three Stooges.) I should get another photo. The family tree is convoluted, because Shaun is both father and grandfather to a couple of them. She-bah is dam to Salt and grand-dam to Ram-bo. All the rest are children of Jetta, who is She-bah's niece. (She-bah's sister, Ewe-nice, had but one lamb before she ate poison ivy and died of it. I guess the prospect of motherhood was too much for her to face. In spite of her limited reproduction, most of our remaining flock is descended from her through that orphan lamb, Jetta.)
In any case, Gary is recovered from mourning enough to actually have said that we could easily get another sheep or two, but let's not get another ram. Hence, no more uncontrolled expansion. ;p Not that we need any more sheep right now, but more attrition is likely. She-bah is eight years old. Salt is seven. Rambo and Jetta are six, I think...
If you've ever seen the 1997 Dreamworks film Mouse Hunt, with that hilarious opening that takes place at a funeral, and things go downhill, or rather down the sewer, from there...
We took care of Shaun the Sheep's remains today, in spite of single digit temperatures and ground that was literally as hard as iron. We both tested with a pickaxe but gave up on that idea. The vet, a sheep-keeping neighbor, and the agricultural extension service all recommended composting as the best way to eliminate the corporeal evidence as it were. Seriously, there's no disrespect here. We loved Shaun, but he doesn't need what he left behind, and neither do we. The alternative, turning him into dog food, seemed much too distasteful, not to mention messy.
So the vet put the sheepie to sleep Friday afternoon. It took a dose large enough for a cow, he said. Shaun was tough, but rams usually are. It was too late to do anything by then, already getting dark, so we left him to lie in state on his straw bed overnight. Once the temperatures got out of the negative range (F) we went to see what could be done. Gary prepared a spot at the edge of our old, very large, compost heap. Even that was frozen rock solid just above ground level, but it's deep enough to cover a sheep anyway. We took the wheelbarrow to serve as our hearse and went to pick up the deceased. Both of us expected him to be frozen stiff after 16 hours of subzero, but he was still flexible... and well-inflated. Ruminants. Of course, those busy bacteria who break down cellulose hadn't got the message yet. Poor Shaun was tight as, well, a balloon if not a tick. Popping him seemed too disrespectful so I didn't propose it. We took him at face value. Well, nearly. It seems even a dead sheep can exhibit flatulence. When we picked him up he farted. Loudly, and malodorously. There was still plenty of gas to keep him inflated though. One almost suspected that in a few more hours he would have drifted away like an errant balloon.
Anyway, we got him to his resting place, placed him in as reposeful a position as possible, and buried him, piling four feet of earth, compost, and manure over him. We'll keep adding to that for a while, more or less daily. The experts say he will have completely broken down in about a year, without any mess or odor. We'll see.
We went back indoors for a hot drink before doing our other chores for the evening. I wondered idly just how long those bacteria would keep working. It must be that the reason he was still limp was the heat generated by the bacterial processing still going on inside him. Otherwise he surely would have frozen up overnight. Soon we were both laughing at the idea of a gas explosion under the compost heap. A "volcano" of sheep manure, as it were. Maybe we really should have popped him first, but what's done is done. Besides, a good laugh helped to get rid of the melancholy air. I'm sure Shaun doesn't mind, wherever he is.
When I went back out to feed everyone and bed them down, I found myself examining the remaining sheep. After previous mortalities, and some given away, we have eight left. All but one of those are Shaun's offspring. Oddly, only a couple of them resemble him much in facial appearance, and both of them are black rather than white. The rest, and especially the wethers, look more like miniature versions of their maternal grandsire, Goose. He was a Finnsheep, white, with a bald patch on top of his head, and quite large. They aren't large, but they all have the bald patch and the sugar bowl haircut or tonsure around it (sort of like Moe of the Three Stooges.) I should get another photo. The family tree is convoluted, because Shaun is both father and grandfather to a couple of them. She-bah is dam to Salt and grand-dam to Ram-bo. All the rest are children of Jetta, who is She-bah's niece. (She-bah's sister, Ewe-nice, had but one lamb before she ate poison ivy and died of it. I guess the prospect of motherhood was too much for her to face. In spite of her limited reproduction, most of our remaining flock is descended from her through that orphan lamb, Jetta.)
In any case, Gary is recovered from mourning enough to actually have said that we could easily get another sheep or two, but let's not get another ram. Hence, no more uncontrolled expansion. ;p Not that we need any more sheep right now, but more attrition is likely. She-bah is eight years old. Salt is seven. Rambo and Jetta are six, I think...