Once upon a time there was a generally well-behaved sheep named Hugh Sheeply-Wittingstall. He lived on an olive grove in the country, and had a long rope tether to one of the trees. He could wander around the trees, out into the surrounding grass, drink from his water dish and generally have a good time – to the end of the rope but no further.

One day Hugh discovered his rope had got a whole lot longer. At first he stayed close to his trees and ate the long grass near the water race, but when that stopped being interesting he started to venture further afield. He had a look at this, sampled a taste of that, and was wandering past the house when he heard a surprised voice say “Well hello Hugh! What are you doing here?”. Hugh was pleased to see one of the people as he was beginning to wonder just how long this rope was. It was nice to walk beside the woman, but he decided she wasn’t that nice after all when she put him in a pen. She took his collar off and Hugh felt decidedly uncomfortable without its familiar weight. When the woman came back with a bucket of water for him he played it cool and drank lots to lull her into a false sense of security. Then he charged at her!

She obviously wasn’t thinking clearly because she held the bucket in front of her as a buffer. Ha, ha, she forgot it was half full, and the force of the charge meant the water ended up all over her!

However she had the last laugh, as the bucket was rather old and it broke – ending up jammed over Hugh’s head. The woman wasn’t any use at first, because she was almost helpless with laughter – but when she finally stopped laughing she took it off him. Hugh shook and shook to get all the water off his face, and then sulked in the corner of the pen, pretending that none of this had happened.

Hugh would like it known that he didn’t mean any harm, and asks that you join the “Free Hugh Sheeply-Wittingstall” campaign by leaving a comment.