Free TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD: Our Tales of Delights and Disasters by Shelley Row Page B

over it. Okay. We’ll sit there. As we settled in for the movie, there was an old, faded sheet covering something on a stand in front of us. John whisked the sheet away to reveal a shiny, new, forty-seven-inch flat-screen television! It was all we could do to stifle a belly-laugh (that came later). To make the scene even more unlikely, the pet sheep wandered in to block our view of the movie. John kept shooing it out so it wouldn’t “baa” while we listened to the program. We watched two films – one about rounding up sheep in the mountains for the yearly shearing and the other about the men who shear sheep for sport. The world record is 843 sheep in ten hours (non-stop from 7 am – 5 pm). This includes reaching inside the pen and hauling out a full-grown sheep. It takes forty-six passes to completely shear the sheep. Then the wool is collected by women working the floor. They throw the fleece in one fling onto a bed and sort it within seconds so they’re ready when the next sheep is finished. It’s a choreographed ballet where each person’s timing is exact. It was impressive and extremely hard work.
     
    We got a small taste of it. John has been raising merino sheep for thirty years and clearly loved telling us about the different breeds and how they are used. Merino sheep are raised for wool and live high on the mountain slopes. They are rounded up twice a year using people and dogs – the dogs being the more important of the two. Crossbred sheep are raised for meat, and they are generally penned in the lower elevations, which make it easier to herd them up for shearing – this is what we were going to do.
     
    John had a few crossbred sheep in the field, and our job was to herd them into the pen by the barn. We paid money for this activity (amazing, isn’t it!), so we headed off through the field tramping through high, green grass and more than a little sheep s---. Sheep s--- comes in much smaller piles than cow s---, which made it more difficult to spot. The good thing about these sheep is that they are largely wild and afraid of people. As soon as we started walking toward the small herd of about twenty sheep, they moved away, staying in a tight pack with their buddies. Walking and shooing, we got the sheep to the barn where John opened the gate to a rickety pen and herded them inside.
     
    Next, we had to move them up a chute into a smaller holding pen for shearing. So there we were – me and Mike – inside a pen with a bunch of sheep. Frightened and panting, they ran around us as we moved avoiding the chute. There was nothing to do but shove. We pushed and shoved and prodded. Eventually, with John’s help, the lead sheep reluctantly headed up the chute and the rest followed.
     
    Inside the shed, we took photos with the six plus sheep waiting to be sheared. Some had curly, oily wool (this is where lanolin comes from) and others had dense, thick, soft wool that made me want to snuggle up next to these fuzzy animals. Plus, sheep have great faces, framed by their big, soft, warm ears. They didn’t have a lot of choice, so they let us pat them, feel their fur, and take countless photos. By this time, my hands were covered with sheep slobber, dirt, oil from the wool, and the charming smell of farm animals. No time to worry about that – it was time to try shearing.
     
    John plugged in the electric shearer (it looks like a larger version of the shears we have for our cat), which was suspended from the wall of the barn. He went into the pen and grabbed one of the sheep and dragged her out by her front legs on her butt. There’s something about this posture that keeps the sheep calm. She just sat there on her “bum” while he held her by her front legs. Her skinny, stick-thin legs stuck straight out as though she was pointing her toes. We each got to try holding her and she cooperated very well. John demonstrated how to shear her and then had me – and then Mike – try it. I carefully ran the shearer