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And Now For Something Completely Different

Byte I

The valley was as peaceful as it could get, it being a stereotypical valley in Northumberland, right down to the RAF planes roaring past at 50feet every few minutes and scaring hikers out of their skins.

Many of these hikers also fell down the mountains they had just spent hours climbing up, much to the amusement of the sheep.

Grass blew mindlessly about in the aftershock of the passing of the aforementioned planes.

The masses of heather and prickly bushed, cunningly placed to ambush unaware ramblers or conceal holes and sign posts from lost travellers looked slightly smug in the satisfaction of a job well done, at least better than the grass.

Still the sheep look amused.

It might not be known to everyone, though sometimes it passes through the minds of lost souls, wandering around in a vain attempt to find a sign post, that all of nature is against hikers.

Of course farmers know this.

That's why they keep ploughing over footpaths and erecting electric fences with notices that you can only see after you've touched it.

Its also why they let their sheep walk absolutely anywhere they want - short of into their wife's flower garden.

You see, sheep are actually extremely intelligent.

They often stand in clusters, pretending to be rocks until a hiker takes a compass bearing on them. At this point they move, deliberately leading the unaware human off in completely the wrong direction.

They also stand in the middle of roads till a car comes, then walk extremely slowly along the black tarmac pitted enough holes to make the drive painful as the driver slams his head into the roof of the car, just to annoy drivers.

Farmers of course, know this. That's why they drive land rovers - roof's too high to hit, see. And tractors. That's a leaf out of the sheep's book.

Cows on the other hand, just stand there and eat grass. The sheep often comment that they have no sense of humour.

The cows reply "Would you if you had to throw your food up three tines and eat it again?"

At this point, the sheep look a little embarrassed. It's not a topic they want to think about.

In this particular valley though, a full-scale war had broken out between sheep and a hiker. Of course, the hiker hadn't realised it yet, but the sheep were on the offensive.

It had started when a hiker climbed over a dry stone wall, complaining at the narrowness of the style, just to find he couldn't climb down again due to all 129 sheep in that particular field having decided that it would be nice to stand in front of the style, being as the grass was particularly nice and juicy there.

The language he had used hadn't been at all nice. And sheep don't take well to threats of mint sauce and haggis.

It was pay back time. The call had gone out, and now every creature, bush and stream was ready to take this particular victim down. Hard.

The sheep smiled. The hiker would never know what hit him.

Byte II

It was several days later when an amused farmer putting up an electric fence noticed a bedraggled man stagger down the mountain.

The man was not very happy. Not happy at all.

He'd been sucked into a bog that had happened to have inexplicably moved six meters north to cover the only path in or out.

He'd almost been drowned in a river that he could have sworn was only a gurgling stream until he was half way across.

He'd experienced an aerial assault from the birds flying overhead jumped on by bushed and to top it off, 129 sheep had wandered into the field he had been camped in and eaten his tent.

There was no way he was going to come back.

Byte III

For some reason - no-one noticed the fact that 129 sheep were busy rolling around on their backs laughing their heads off.

Those humans that did probably thought it was due to the local water.

End

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