Maa-Maat and The Red Thing

This is the Red Thing. It is the most indispensable item on the farm. Two people fit very comfortably in the seat, three if you squeeze together. Three bales of hay fit perfectly in the back. It never gets stuck. It never breaks—OK one time it did and believe me, it was a nightmare. Without the Red Thing, horses would go without hay and grain. Fences would never get repaired. Eggs would never be collected. We would have to walk up and down the hill to the barn. Life would be miserable. I ride in The Red Thing.

This is Checkers. She helps bring the horses in and helps put them out. She supervises feeding, stall mucking and general chores. As you can see, she rides in The Red Thing.

This is Maa-Maat. She can do tricks. She plays her little piano and her little drum. She rings her cowbell and jumps through her hoop. She can even do a sheep version of moon walking.

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One afternoon a while back, I was down at the barn getting feed and hay ready to take to the horses in the back pastures. The lambs were out of their stall, and three of them were off grazing up on the hill. Not Maa-Maat, though. She was hanging around the barn to keep an eye out should I forget to latch the door to the feed stall.

It only takes her an instant to dash in and throw herself headfirst into the nearest open feed bag. She doesn’t care if it’s lamb feed or horse feed or poultry feed or chicken scratch. It’s all the same to her—edible. And once she gets her head in a bag, it is not easy to get her out. She stiffens up her neck and somehow manages to concentrate her weight it’s all you can do to push and pull and tug and shove her back out into the aisle.

By the time I got the grain buckets filled and sorted, she wasn’t at the front of the barn, so I figured she had given up and gone out to graze with the others. I loaded the buckets into the back of The Red Thing and tied them down. I called to Checkers, and she got in The Red Thing. I got into The Red Thing.

I started it up, put it in gear, and we were ready to go when—

Maa-Maat clambered into The Red Thing. The first thing she did was the first thing she always does. She grabbed the nearest thing, the key, and started trying to eat it.

The first thing Checkers did was jump in my lap and start barking to alert me there was a problem.

At this point, I was trying to pry open Maa-Maat’s mouth to get the key so I could turn the engine off. Since the Red Thing was in gear and running, I was also trying to hold onto Checkers so she wouldn’t slip down and hit the accelerator.

Finally, I got the key away from Maa-Maat and turned off the engine. As you can see, the floorboard isn’t very wide and Maa-Maat isn’t very narrow so there was no way she could turn around. She was going to have to walk all the way through and out the other side.

I got out.

Checkers got out.

After checking if the gear shift was edible—it wasn’t—and checking if the steering wheel was edible—it wasn’t, Maa-Maat finally got out.

Good! Disaster averted. Just to be on the safe side, I grabbed a little bit of grain and teased Maa-Maat into the barn with it. While she was busy gobbling it up, I ran to the Red Thing and got in. Checkers ran to the Red Thing and got in.

But before we could get away, Maa-Maat ran to the Red Thing and got in.

This time it went faster: I got out of the Red Thing. Checkers got out of the Red Thing. Maa-Maat got out of the Red Thing. I ran into the barn and scattered a bit more grain down the aisle then raced back to the Red Thing.

This time we made it—almost.

I came around the other end of the barn, and there she was in the middle of the road waiting for us.

I made a quick U-turn and circled around to the other end of the barn. Maa-Maat raced down the aisle, and there she was again, blocking the road.

Another U-turn. Another Maa-Maat block.

And again.

Sometimes it’s difficult to out-smart a sheep, but it’s not impossible. The next time, instead of making a U-turn and going around the barn, I made a complete 360 degree turn. As Checkers and I drove past, I could see Maa-Maat at the far end of the barn, waiting for us.

Maybe one day I'll find a way for Maa-Maat to take a ride in the Red Thing.

The Smartest Sheep in Grainger County*

*This claim is based on 1) the scarcity of sheep in Grainger County and 2) the assumption that most people have better things to do with their time than clicker train sheep.

Here's little Maa-Maat, my 6 month old Tunis lamb, showing off her tricks.

As you can see, there are no cuts in the video. This was done to show how much she enjoys performing. As a matter of fact, she usually has a little temper fit when it's time to stop.

The most complicated thing she does is the Bang the Drum trick. For this, she has to hit the feed pan with first one foot then the other. Just banging away at it with one foot doesn't work.

As for the Bow Down trick, she can also expand it to crawling along on her knees. This, however, has pretty much been eliminated from her repitroire as it just looks too creepy.

If anyone has any suggestions for additional tricks, I'd really like to hear them. My husband is after me to try to teach her to roll over, but being as she's 1) overweight and 2) a sheep, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. Neither is she very well suited to retrieving items as she pretty much tries to eat anything she can fit into her mouth.

Princess Maa-Maat

A few weeks ago, I was in the barn cleaning stalls when it started sprinkling. It was nothing much, just a few spits and spurts to tease us into thinking we would finally get some decent rain. When I went outside to empty the muck bucket, I could hear Maa-Maat crying. The other three lambs were over at the side of the barn grazing and making the most of their time out of the stall, but not Maa-Maat. I looked all over before I finally found her standing standing in the doorway of the arena bawling her little heart out.

Poor thing. Every time she'd stick her head out the door, a rain drop would hit her, and she'd jump back in. I called her, and she came running as fast as she could, shaking her head and doing that little uh-uh-uh she does when she's being a baby. She spent the rest of the morning inside the barn with me and refused to step a foot outside. Even when I'd go out to empty the muck bucket, she'd stand at the door and cry until I'd come back.

By the afternoon, the rain was long gone, but she remembered. When I let the lambs out of the stall, the other three took off outside like they normally do, but not Maa-Maat. She stopped at the door and stood looking up at the sky until she was absolutely convinced she wasn't going to get wet. Then and only then did she tip-toe out.

She may not be the most gorgeous lamb around. And she may not be the smartest. But one thing's for certain, she is the most spoiled.

The Princess Maa-Maat

Maa-Maat and the Blackberry Patch

Sheep are not the most intelligent of animals. I love them to pieces, but they are just not very bright. A good example is the trouble Maa-Maat got herself into this week.

The three lambs had been out grazing around the barn for a couple of hours while I did chores in the barn. No problems at all. Everything was just as it should be, but then Maa-Maat started maat-ing very loudly. From the tone, I could tell something was wrong. Well, from the tone and the fact that Merlin and Rachael started screaming also.

When I got around to the side of the barn, I could see that Maa-Maat had managed to get herself caught in a blackberry patch on the side of a steep slope. She was in so deep that I could just barely see her head sticking out.

For any other animal, this wouldn't be such a problem. It may get a few scratches, but it would manage to push out and through the briars. For a sheep it's a bit different because 1) sheep have wool that gets caught up in the briars and 2) a sheep's brain is about the size of a very small, very dry peanut.

I managed to get part of the way down the slope and rattled a grain bucket to try to coax her out. She would struggle against the briars to come to me, then because she's a sheep with only a tiny little sheep brain, she'd get distracted by a berry and stop to eat. I'd rattle the bucket again, she'd struggle some more, then spot another berry and stop to eat. This went on for quite a while. Since I couldn't risk going any further down the slope without falling, I was pretty much at a loss as to what to do. Luckily the woman who was weedeating for us finished up and came by. Her balance was much better and she was able to scramble down the slope to Maa-Maat and help her find a way out of the briars.

It seemed that during this, Maa-Maat's thoughts went something like this: I'm trapped--Panic! Oh, that looks tasty. Help! Help! Wait, is that another blackberry? Yummy. PANIC! PANIC!

She's not unusual. From what I've seen, sheep have incredibly short attention spans. In this day and age when we are told to "live in the moment," sheep have gone all of us one better--They live in the second.

All in all, not a bad thing.....

As long as you stay away from the blackberry patch.

Maa-Maat and Friends

Maa-Maat is a little Tunis ewe. Her mother, Evil, was very sick when she was born and died shortly afterwards. Because of this Maa-Maat has been completely hand-reared. The picture was taken when she was only a few days old. She was born early and had very little wool, hence the sweater.

She's now about three months old and is doing fine. The only problem we have with her is that she is a little more than just slightly overweight. I've been doing some clicker training with her, and so far she knows to jump up on a bale of straw, kneel down and crawl a short distance, and jump through a hoop. Her "jump through a hoop" isn't all that great because...well...she's not all that great a jumper. Did I mention the weight problem?

In addition to Maa-Maat, we have two other lambs, Merlin and Rachael. Merlin is a little black Welsh mountain wether (castrated male) and Rachael is a Jacob ewe. In the mornings and evenings, the three of them line up at their stall door for me to put their collars on. Once they have their collars, they go out to graze or explore or whatever.

Although they don't come when called, they will come if I rattle a grain bucket. They also come running down the center aisle of the barn periodically just to check if I have any treats for them.