[lit-ideas] Re: Speaking of Sheep
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 15:23:10 -0800
On Nov 21, 2006, at 2:44 PM, Andy Amago wrote:
For David Ritchie, what does one do with the sheep in the wintertime?
Here the problem is not seasons but the ratio of grass to sheep. I
know someone who raises lambs for people to eat. I asked why they
killed them in the summer. It's because the cost of irrigating the
field would be too high. Without water, the grass goes brown and
doesn't sustain many animals. My friend with the Romneys has but three
sheep on more than an acre. With a little commercial food each night
and because we don't get much snow, the sheep are pretty much
maintenance free all winter. It helps that they live on a slope and
thus don't suffer from foot rot.
Regarding the goats being too stupid not to eat what kills them, that?s
more than faintly reminiscent of human behavior. Maybe it just proves
that
we're the same as our cousins the goats, just a lot more lethal.
One of my favorite lines from Britannica is that "sheep move almost
imperceptively into goats," by which is meant that they are closely
related. Exploration of the metaphorical links among humans, goats and
sheep are, I believe, still the most popular field of inquiry at our
venerable sister institution, Mutton College.
David Ritchie,
Adjunct Professor of Foot Rot Studies
University of Romney Marsh
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