OPINION: Are sheep funny? They must be. Last week’s news that this country’s people-to-sheep ratio has fallen to its lowest level since the 1850s, to one to five, in fact, was reported by various media with the sort of jocularity usually saved for apparently hilarious stories about Chris Hipkins and sausage rolls.
On TVNZ’s 1 News, the story was introduced with the beaming smiles presenters deploy to signal to thick viewers that the next story is “good news”. Meanwhile, on RNZ National’s Morning Report, a Hawke’s Bay farmer was asked by an interviewer pretending to have a sense of humour whether he knew any good sheep jokes.
Across the Tasman, a TV presenter on the ABC’s breakfast show even dissolved into a fit of giggles over the side-splitting news that New Zealand now has only 25.3 million sheep, down by 400,000 in just a year.
As it happens, the reasons for the rapid decline aren’t funny. The positive part is that improved breeding means fewer ewes produce more and better lambs. But the drop is also caused by the increasingly difficult economics of sheep farming, not least that the price of wool, probably the world’s best and most versatile natural fibre, is now so low it doesn’t come close to covering the cost of shearing.
Then there is the short-sighted but booming practice of turning large areas of fertile farmland into exotic pine “carbon farms”. As far I can see, this is one dubious money-making scheme designed to prop up another, the carbon credits trading system, which, let’s be frank, just lets carbon polluters keep polluting. You can’t save the planet from climate change by fancy book-keeping, flimflam or greenwashing – the only way is by reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and having a smaller national sheep flock will at least help with that.
Anyway, there’s nothing funny about any of this, so the ha-ha-ha-ing from various media bores was presumably nothing to do with the travails involved in sheep farming, but with sheep themselves.
Now, although individual sheep can be hilarious – my pet ewe Xanthe once pooed in Michele’s gumboot – sheep in general shouldn’t be laughed at, but celebrated because they, more than any other animal, are central to the human story.
I am reading (after a recommendation by a reader; thanks, Merle!) A Short History of the World According to Sheep, a beautifully put-together, richly researched volume by English author Sally Coulthard. She writes that, starting about 11,000 years ago, sheep have fed us, clothed us, changed our diet, made us both richer and poorer, altered our landscape, helped build great civilisations and win wars, decorated our homes, allowed us to create artistic treasures and financed pioneers and privateers to conquer large swathes of the planet.
Indeed, kingdoms, communities and nations have been built on sheep farming, not least New Zealand, which, as the phrase long had it, “lived on the sheep’s back” for more than a century.
So, we here at Lush Places say hooray for the glorious, amazing, sometimes silly sheep – and we are bucking the downsizing trend. Five years ago, our people-to-sheep ratio was one-to-one. Now, there is one of us to two and a half sheeple. Given Michele’s ever-expanding Cute, Sick, Stray or Endangered Animal Acquisition Initiative, it’s only a matter of time before our flock reaches a million.
Is there actually such a thing as a good sheep joke? The farmer who spoke to RNZ said the only ones he knew were “naughty”, by which he meant, presumably, that they involve unnatural acts banned in civilised countries.
Most sheep jokes aren’t really jokes, anyway. They either involve crude and pathetic stereotypes about sheep shagging or are godawful puns of the “What sort of cars do sheep prefer? Lamborghinis” variety.
But there are one or two good ones around, like this one that I have crossbred so it might thrive in local conditions: A bloke walks into a pub in downtown Masterton to find a sheep serving behind the bar. “What’s your poison?” asks the sheep. The bloke says nothing, but instead stares in amazement. Eventually, the sheep gets huffy. “What’s your problem? Haven’t you seen a sheep pulling pints before?” “It’s not that,” the bloke says. “I just never thought the horse would sell the place.”
