I nearly had a fight with a sheep today. She was 100 yards away and although I couldn’t really see them from this distance, I knew her eyes were staring – challenging me.
‘Who are you?’ they asked.
I sat for a lengthy amount of time accepting that challenge; meeting it head on. My cigarette slowly turned to ash, ignored at my side. There were no sounds – no bird song or tractor rumbling in the distance. Just the smell of sheep-shit and her black, arrogant eyes.
The more she looked at me, the more annoyed I became. She was in no way a cute cloud of cotton wool. Her fur was not white but matted and stained. She lay in the grass, freakishly still. Her head didn’t move, nor her black triangular ears. She was infinite and ageless, had seen the farm buildings around her rise and then crumble, brick by brick. She was the queen of the field, and still, she stared.
She was calm, unconcerned, flaunting her status as she looked down on me from her throne on the hill. My blood began to burst through my veins, first gear to fifth. My heart quickened, face screwed up, turning purple.
‘Cheeky bitch!’ I thought. ‘Who the fuck does she think she is?’ I couldn’t bear those eyes any longer. I moved forward one step at a time, thinking she would get up and leave.
But no, of course she stayed sat; not arsed one bit about my approach. Others around her, more sensible, rose and tottered further up the hill. They were at the edges of my vision, a mass of swirling movement and noise, while in the centre, like how a bull sees a matador, this white she-devil sat, smirking and staring. My teeth found the outer edges of my lip, as if using pain to distract me from those beady, stubborn stones in her head. I knew I had a choice to make, accept defeat and leave the field, or charge the fucker down.
I bolted right at her – legs striding longer than ever before. I screamed, ‘COME ON THEN YOU FUCKING TWAT. HAVE SOME OF THIS!’
She stood up on her four, dirty legs, looking much larger than I’d predicted. I thought for a moment that I’d messed up, bit off more mutton than I could chew. The look in her eyes said she was ready — to ram into me or stand her ground until I backed out. I wasn’t going to do that though. I was going to kick her right in the fucking jaw. At ten yards away, she turned and scarpered. I bounced around, shouting with pride.
‘YES! HAVE THAT! DICKHEAD!’
A proper scouse sheep-dog.
liamdkporter 