Ethel, Our Cull Ewe

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 132, 2 January 1942, Page 5

Ethel, Our Cull Ewe

WHENEVER people try to convince me that sheep are merely silly, I introduce them to Etheland they have to admit there’s such a thing as low cunning in sheep as well as in human beings. Low cunning is really Ethel’s long suit. She is, I think, one of the nastiest animals in many ways that I

have ever known — and yet she is such an institution on our farm that I really dread the day when she will finally be removed from us. Not by sale; only a buyer wholly blind and imbecile would ever buy Ethel-even if we would sell her, which would be unthinkable-but removed by death-and surely that must be very near, since Ethel is now about nine vears old. Even she

cannot live for eyer-though I am sure that she will have a very good try. Of course, we should never have kept her-not after her third lamb, anyway; a thoroughly stern and practical farmer would have sold her long ago-for Ethel really represents just about everything that the stock reports mean when they speak of "a cull ewe." Her wool, through extreme old age, is so light as to be scarcely worth removing — and she makes the "process difficult enough by hiding every year at shearing time. She isn’t even prolific; she has never. had twins-and if she were now to produce them at her advanced age I fear it would be too much for her already wandering mind.--("Our Animal Friends: Are Sheep So Silly?" by Mrs, Mary Scott, 1YA, November 14.)