Wherein We Finally Admit Maisie Has Been Possessed

We had our concerns after the Halloween debacle where/when she completely behaved herself out in public at the humane society fundraiser at the local Dairy Queen.  Still, Maisie is nothing if not a comedian and we decided she just had more fun making us look like fools walking around with our huge entourage of animal control experts.

"Seriously."

As spring shearing approached, I once again got nervous about how we were going to handle her.  We don't tip her upside down like the rest of the sheep because we are still worried about her ingested ball of hay twine that we can only assume is still floating around in her rumen and could cause trouble if it got stirred around.  

Bill hates shearing her.  It takes at least two people.  She's obnoxious and fussy.  She bites, kicks, tries to knock you down (pretty much every day ;-).  She's also short and built like a rhinoceros and her belly is so close to the ground that you can't get to it without getting down on your knees.  

She spent all last year with belly wool hanging down like fuzzy dice from a rear view mirror.  Bill apologized, but said he was worried he would cut her and I could also tell that he'd had enough of her for one year.  I asked if raising her up on a shearing stand next year would help.  "It might, if she'll stand on it."

I pulled out the old shearing stand and cleaned it up and Tim made sure it was still in working order.  When we got ready to shear Maisie this year, Bill pulled it into the shearing area, next to his clippers.  We looked at each other, looked at Maisie, laughed a bit nervously, discussed how we'd get her up on there...

...and I don't know how it happened, but all of the sudden she was standing politely on the stand by herself with the white plastic chain behind her head and Bill was off and shearing.

Barely even a tail swish! :-o

At the very end, when we removed the chain so Bill could shear the last little bit where it was resting around her ears, she did eventually make a move and got away from us for a minute.  When it was all said and done though and she calmly trotted out of the barn with just barely a sassy glance over her shoulder, I still felt uneasy.

I think she's been possessed...by a good demon...and honestly...that's a bit frightening :-o.

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Thank you for all the kind comments about sweet little Claire Bear.  I enjoyed scrolling back through years of blog posts trying to see if I had an actual gotcha date for her, but she was older than the blog.  Sadly, many of our beloved friends are as old or older than the blog now and we are going to have more sad days coming, but hopefully not soon.  Still, they will live on in our hearts and a bit on in the blog and for that I am thankful.