Not in my baaack yard!
200 sheep descend on semi-detached home
WITH its smart red brick walls, elegant patio doors and a gleaming BMW on the driveway, this semi-detached home looks the very picture of suburbia.
But briefly the back garden of Richard Brown was turned into a pastoral idyll – as a flock of 200 sheep descended upon it.
When one of the flock took a wrong turn into Mr Brown’s driveway, it was soon joined by a couple of hundred more.
The telecoms manager was left ‘shocked and bewildered’ when he looked into his back garden to find it packed with the farm animals grazing on the lawn.
Their shepherdess – the aptly named Sally Shepherd, 27 – had been leading them through the village of Harrold, Bedfordshire, from one field to another on
‘I had to give the driveway a jet wash’
Friday afternoon. ‘We’d gone ahead and checked all the garden gates, so thought there was nowhere else for them to go but towards the right field,’ she said.
‘I was at the back with the dog, then we realised they’d started piling into someone’s garden. I swore a bit, then we ran down and had to start pushing them out, making lots of noise to drive them back.
‘There were 400 in total and about half made it into the garden.’
Father-of-three Mr Brown, 58, said: ‘I started to see all these white shapes appearing in the driveway. I was in a state of shock and bewilderment.’
Miss Shepherd was able to coax the ani- mals out of Mr Brown’s garden after less than ten minutes. He said: ‘There was a bit of panic but it wasn’t long before they were back on their way.
‘I had to give the driveway a bit of a jet wash but it’s fine now, and the farmer has been round to check everything is OK.’
Sheep have a strong instinct to walk after the animal in front and will even follow each other to the slaughter or off a cliff. ‘If they find a gap, one will go through it and inevitably the rest will follow,’ Miss Shepherd said. ‘But I’ve never seen 200 of them all pile into someone’s driveway.’
Quick change on wool ban – Page 19