I should have taken more pictures. The sheep and lambs near our cabin in the mountains love to lie in the middle of the road, usually three or four of them together. This one is doing it right in the middle of a blind curve. It’s not as if they run away when a car comes, either. They expect the cars to stop or to drive slowly and carefully around them – and they do. Someone said they like it because the asphalt is warmer than the other ground, but it wasn’t a particularly cold day when I took this picture.
This post is definitely not about goats.
A Bad Guide 
Upland sheep here behave similarly. It’s as if they’ve had arrogance lessons from cats.
“arrogance lessons from cats”
Hahaha!
The pavement must have good temperatures for their bellies, I suppose
They are a bit like cats. They like to sit on our verandah when we’re not there. Do Scottish sheep wear bells, dearie? You can just see this one has a bell.
It’s a toll road.
It is holding its legs all crooked, as if they had already been run over. Are you sure this is not a have-pity-on-animals scam to get you to stop, upon which a highway robber steps out.from behind the nearest tree ? With a non-sheepish look on his face ?
I bet you didn’t stop.
What, a wolf in sheep’s clothing? We did stop, it’s our turn-off. Dyveke made me take the picture because one second before it had been resting its long pointed face along the ground just like our dog Topsy does. It’s one of the drawbacks of having a head that’s an enormous cantilever, the neck muscles must get tired holding it up.
This week I was watching another BBC documentary on German tv, this one about “missing links” between various on-all-fours or slouching ancestors of homo sap. Two boffins were fingering animal skeletons and using video anima(la)tion to explain how inconvenient and exhausting is the life of, say, lions. In order to see their prey properly, they must keep their head at an almost 90 degree angle to the top of the spine. Not to mention that their eyebrow bones have to be at an unattractive height in the cranium so that they can avoid running into trees, without having to lift their weary heads.
Many tv documentaries on evolution, biology etc. have a sneaky, design-by watchmaker plot. Used to be, the watchmaker was in the sky. Now the boffins have taken upon themselves the role of watchmaker, explaining how everything fits together as a series of clever improvements.
As I now understand it, evolution figured out that walking upright would put humans one up over lions, because the neck muscles would not have to be so strong. Pity the poor lions ! I may have to write a letter to the Times.
Do Scottish sheep wear bells, dearie?
Not that I’ve ever seen. Cats often do though.
I saw that Pete Townshend wrote a letter to The Times complaining about the treatment of the punk band Pussy Riot by the Russian police. I thought, a letter to The Times? What happened to “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, won’t get fooled again” etc…?
Lyrics have the advantage over affidavits that they need only rhyme and be edifying. The former are sung, the latter must be signed. Townshend’s present actions are inconsistent with his former ones, but they are not actionable – however injurious to public morale they may be.
I like the idea of a rhyming affidavit. Perhaps some barristers could rap a whole lawsuit.
In The West Wing a Supreme Court judge who really should be retiring because his mind is not what it used to be begins writing judicial opinions in various verse forms.
A penny drops: mountain sheep, crows – you must have been thinking of this.
The War Song of Dinas Vawr
The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met a host, and quelled it;
We forced a strong position,
And killed the men who held it.
On Dyfed’s richest valley,
Where herds of kine were browsing,
We made a mighty sally,
To furnish our carousing.
Fierce warriors rushed to meet us;
We met them, and o’erthrew them:
They struggled hard to beat us;
But we conquered them, and slew them.
As we drove our prize at leisure,
The king marched forth to catch us:
His rage surpassed all measure,
But his people could not match us.
He fled to his hall-pillars;
And, ere our force we led off,
Some sacked his house and cellars,
While others cut his head off.
We there, in strife bewild’ring,
Spilt blood enough to swim in:
We orphaned many children,
And widowed many women.
The eagles and the ravens
We glutted with our foemen;
The heroes and the cravens,
The spearmen and the bowmen.
We brought away from battle,
And much their land bemoaned them,
Two thousand head of cattle,
And the head of him who owned them:
Ednyfed, king of Dyfed,
His head was borne before us;
His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,
And his overthrow, our chorus.
Thomas Love Peacock
Kine is Scots, dearie. But I see from Wikipedia that Peacock married a Welsh person called Jane, “the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope” according to Shelley, which may account for the poem. I know nothing about Thomas Love Peacock, so I must look into this. Thanks for posting it.
“Kine is Scots, dearie”: I suspect that it’s antique English. We said “kye”.
I think “kine” is an old plural form of “cow”. Is Scots “kye” the plural ? Of what singular form ?.
Plural: we’d “wait until the kye come home”.