Courtesy of Franklin at The Panopticon, Miniature Cheviot Sheep.

I tried to borrow a friend's bottle-fed sheep once, for a reenacting event. I figured that since Baa (the sheep) had been a bottle lamb, raised in Christina's kitchen, it'd be used to being around humans. What I didn't figure on was that Baa had grown up considerably in the month since I first saw him, and had also been reunited with the flock, so when I arrived to pick him up, I got a fully-grown sheep who was not happy at being separated from the flock.

At the time I had a blue Subaru Legacy station wagon. It was a good little wagon, and I managed to haul lots of gear to reenacting events with me. So, I lined the back of the wagon with plastic tarp and newspaper and put Baa in. On the hour-long drive home, Baa bleated softly. I got the wierdest looks from other drivers (how often do you see a station wagon with a sheep in the back?) but figured things were going moderately well.

When I got home, I put Baa in the kitchen, where I'd set up a small pen lined with newspapers and furnished with some hay and water. Baa didn't, however, think that this looked much like home, so he commenced to bleating much more loudly than he'd done in the car -- so loudly that it would have been impossible to sleep. He also showed no signs of stopping the infernal noise. We briefly contemplated putting him in the basement or the back yard, but the stairs and the thought of annoying our neighbors made us decide to cut our losses and take Baa back home that evening, even though it was already about 10 pm. I called Dan to tell him that we'd be late for the event on Saturday; I think I heard him laughing his head off on the other end of the line at the bleating he was hearing in the background from my end.