[For the Sheep.]
Once, not so long ago, there was a little village. In the village, there lived many happy people, some of whom were little, and others who were not. The villagers raised all sorts of animals on the green in the middle of the village. The green was considered the property of everyone in the village, and was open to all.
Some villagers raised sheep, while others raised goats, geese, and chickens. A few of the more outlandish villagers raised llamas, but they didn't bother anyone, and no one bothered them. Life was very peaceful and pastoral, which was more than could be said for most villages.
Over time, however, some villagers started to criticize other villagers livestock choices. It started when some shepherds started to spread rumors that goats were responsible for spreading diseases throughout the town. Soon, many shepherds felt that it was perfectly acceptable to walk up to a goat herder and tell him that what he really needed to be truly happy was to sell his goats and buy some sheep.
The goat herders (and the villagers who owned geese or chickens or llamas, no one was really immune to the shepherds' criticism) would mumble something about not really minding the goats (or geese or chickens or llamas) so much, but it was difficult to get a word in edgewise, because the shepherds were pretty forceful by this time, and yelled a lot.
They also carried signs.
One morning, the villagers woke up to discover that a certain member of the judging panel from the County Fair had snuck a great big statue of a sheep onto the green during the night. The statue had several quotations on it that suggested that Grass was meant for Sheep, and that no other Animal was fit to graze.
Quite a few villagers were upset about this because, while they had no problem sharing the green with the shepherds, they felt that this statue might lead people to think that the green was for sheep only. They asked the Village Council to have the statue removed from the green, and suggested that a better place for the statue might be the Shepherd's Guild.
The Village Council agreed, even though one or two members were known shepherds. The judge who had installed the statue did not.
"The founders of this village were shepherds!" he cried. This was not exactly true, as several founders had dabbled in a diversity of livestock, but many shepherds were followers, and they took up the cry. In fact, they crowded around the statue and refused to let anyone move it.
"You cannot trample on the rights of the shepherd!" they yelled. "You want to remove sheep from the green, and we cannot allow that!"
A couple of llama wranglers tried to point out that sheep were quite welcome on the green, and always had been, and that the problem was the statue, and not really the statue, but the placement of the statue on the green, and in the middle of the night, no less. They were shouted down, and pelted with apples from a nearby crab apple tree.
This went on for quite some time, and the shepherds became more and more vocal in their support of the statue. They even brought in shepherds from neighboring towns by wagon to help with the vigil.
They were in the middle of a very loud sheep poetry recital when someone noticed something moving over the face of a nearby mountain. Someone else had a small telescope, and quickly peered at the moving shape.
"The sheep have escaped!" he cried. The crowd of shepherds scattered, racing after their flocks. "We are ruined!" they wept.
It was true. While the shepherds had been defending their statue, they had been neglecting their sheep, which had eventually wriggled out of their pens in search of grass, and now were dashing headlong into the mountainous wild.
That afternoon, the statue was quietly removed without any fuss.
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003
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© 2003 Karl Bailey.