Chapter Eighteen – Phil

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – PHIL

‘Oh hello is that Pen Y Bryn Animal Sanctuary?’ an educated lady’s voice questioned me after I answered my mobile phone whilst halfway through cleaning out one of the goat sheds.

‘Yes, it is, how can I help?’ I answered brusquely, irritated with myself for answering the phone when I was really so short of time.

‘Well, I wonder if you can help,’ the voice replied, ‘it’s just that my elderly flock of pet sheep has become rather depleted and I’m just left with one old ram as all of the ewes have died. Well, I feel it’s wrong for him to be left on his own and I’m not going to get any more sheep and rather than have him slaughtered I wondered if you might take him from us?’

It was a common tactic that I was used to – illustrating care for their animals by wanting what’s best for them combined with the casual underlying threat that if we couldn’t help out then the animal would be subsequently culled.

I tried to remain as professional as possible whilst facing this emotional blackmail.

‘Is he in good health?’ I responded, ‘Castrated?’

‘Oh yes, he’s fine, he’s old of course, about ten or eleven, maybe some arthritis, but happy enough and yes, yes he’s most definitely castrated, we’ve had him with our ewes for years and never a sign of an offspring.’ The voice gabbled, clearly excited that I had shown some positivity to my reply.

‘And he’s tagged? You’ve got a CPH number? Transport?’ I went on methodically whilst casually picking some goat poo from my tousled hair.

‘Oh yes yes yes, all of that of course. Will you take him?’

‘I think we probably can. Look, I’m up to my neck at the moment, can you email me and we’ll take it from there.’

‘Of course, absolutely, I’ll do it in now, is the email …. Umm …. penybrynanimals@outlook.com ?’

‘That’s it, I’ll get onto it as soon as possible, if you don’t hear from me in a couple of days give me a nudge.’

‘Oh that’s marvellous, thank you so much, yes, I’ll do that, will speak soon, thank you so much again it’s so appreciated.’ The relief and delight was evident in her voice.

That evening when I was going through my emails I came across her message. It was gushing in its appreciation for our offered help and reiterated the casual threat that if we couldn’t help the sheep would be slaughtered. Almost as an aside, the email finished with the information that the wether was named Phil. I read through the email a second time and then resolved to deal with it the following evening when I would have a little more time and when perhaps my emotions wouldn’t feel so rankled as they currently did.

The following morning, whilst I was trying to help a prolapsed chicken, my phone rang again, and cursing myself for being so easily sidetracked I automatically answered it.

‘Oh hello, I called yesterday about my wethered ram, Phil, you said you could take him on, can I arrange to bring him later today?’

‘What? No, I’m sorry today is no good. Look I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, I received your email, we’ll take him on, but I’ve just got to work out some logistics, you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ll email tonight. Bit busy now. Cheers’ and I hung up.

That evening I did email her back and suggested some day and time options, gave her directions and our CPH number for her transportation forms. Less than five minutes after sending my email she replied, she really was desperate to rid herself of the sheep. She had chosen the following Monday afternoon to bring it over so I had four days to make any preparations necessary.

It was a cold mid-January afternoon when the Range Rover entered our drive towing a small horsebox. As soon as the vehicle had stopped, the passenger door flung open and a well fed, middle aged woman wearing Barbour wellies and jacket bounced out and over to me waving an outstretched hand.

‘Hellooo, are you Peter? Lovely to meet you, thank you so much for taking our lovely Phil, so kind of you, so appreciated. He’s a lovely old boy, lovely temperament, no harm in him at all, will be so sorry to see him go.’ She rabbited on quickly without offering a breathing space for me to respond. ‘He’ll be a little put out from his ride here but he’ll be just fine I’m sure, where are we taking him? Oh just over there where I can see your ewes? Lovely, come on Jim let’s be getting him out.’ She turned to the man who had driven her and strode quickly to the back of the horsebox without waiting for any kind of response from me.

‘Wow, let’s just hang on a minute shall we before we start letting loose any animals. He is going into that paddock, but I want him taken in under control not just left to run rampant.’ I may as well have been talking to myself for as I finished off my short speech the rear door of the horsebox was flung open.

‘Out you come Phil, you’re at your new home now.’ She called into the box from a fixed stance at the bottom of the ramp.

For a moment nothing happened, and then a large woolly brown head slowly appeared and tentatively looked out. I walked nearer to the box in anticipation that an unshackled sheep could easily evade us all if it suddenly decided on a liberty inspired rampage. The wether however was not going anywhere particularly fast. It placed a tentative hoof down the ramp, and then a second, then casually a third. With a clear level of disinterest he moved himself down the ramp and onto the drive, looking slowly from one side to the other.

‘Come on Phil, chop chop, let’s be having you’ her voice commanded in that high tone of someone who is used to people doing what they have been told.

By my observation Phil was not listening or interested in her, his pace didn’t increase and he continued to take in his new surroundings with a clear air of indifference. I slowly walked to him, talking quietly in welcome with an outstretched hand. His head raised slightly inquisitively and for a moment his beautiful large brown eyes were looking straight at me.

‘Hello Phil, lovely to meet you fella, are you going to come with me?’ I questioned softly.

In response he stepped slightly away from the horsebox in my direction. His whole demeanour was of an old sheep, his head lowered, his movement slow. He showed no energy whatsoever.

I confidently came to his side, placed my hand upon his shoulder and then beckoned and encouraged him towards the paddock gate. The old sheep gave me no resistance and slowly, side by side we walked the fifty yards or so from the horse box to the space that would be his new home. With every step the old wether grabbed a little more of my heart. There was nothing unpleasant in this animal, no malignancy, he was just old, tired and perhaps resigned. There had clearly been change enough in his life and now he took this new change with an apathy borne of experience. I talked constantly to him and occasionally caught him pricking his ears up to my words, but by and large his head was bowed and his mood somewhat depressed.

We arrived at the gate without incident, I pulled up the latch, pushed out the gate and walked him in. Then I closed the gate and left him standing, head down, his nostrils gently twitching at the smell of the nearby grass.

‘Oh jolly good, nicely done, quite the sheep whisperer you are there.’ Phil’s erstwhile owner had appeared at my shoulder. ‘Now, I really do appreciate you taking Phil on like this and I have brought an opened bag of his feed for you and of course I will go down to Wynnstay and will pop up another bag for you.

‘That’s very kind of you, thank you.’ I replied whilst keenly watching Phil, my heart pouring out to him.

‘And, and of course I will send you a donation, now what would work best for you? Would you like a really large one off donation or shall I start up a regular standing order?’

‘Oh, really that has to be your call, but thank you. However, I would say that perhaps a one off donation would be fairer, I would hate for you to set up a standing order only for the poor boy to pass away after a few months.’ I replied.

‘Yes, yes, very true, absolutely, okay, well I shall pop a sizeable sum into your account this very evening. Now thanks again we must really rush.’ She turned to leg it back to the Range Rover.

‘Just one thing,’ I called to her back, ‘do you have the transportation forms for Phil? We do need them.’

‘Oh yes, yes, of course, right here.’ She pulled the forms from her jacket pocket, duly got me to sign and gave me my copy. And then with barely another word the two were reversing out of our drive.

I shrugged to myself. She was exactly what I had envisaged she would be. But Phil wasn’t, Phil had a gentle persona that was coated with a fleece of loneliness. I went straight back to where I had left him. He had barely moved. He looked up at me as I approached in half interest and once again our eyes met. Such warm eyes, such depth.

For a couple of minutes I sat with him in the paddock talking gently and getting to know him. Then in the corner of my eye I became aware of movement towards us. The ewes had clearly sensed change and were slowly making their way up the slope and into the orchard area in which we were stationed. I looked up to them and called them over.

With my raised tone Phil became slightly startled. He raised his head and looked towards where I seemed to be directing my voice. Initially he clearly didn’t see anything unusual, but then when the ewes moved a little more, his ears pricked and his nostrils twitched excitedly, he raised his head, lowered his shoulders and in a moment his countenance had changed from that of an aging, listless sheep to a young energetic one. He turned his body to face the nearing ewes, his nose constantly moving, his ears were now vertical and slanted forwards. Then he was off. With a loud, long bleat he started bouncing towards the ewes with excitement pouring from his body.

For their part the ewes stopped dead in their tracks when they saw this large figure hurtling down through the trees towards them, then sensing danger of one sort or another they bounded back down the paddock, each going in different directions.

Phil’s pace picked up, the bounce in his old, once-tired legs, increased and he chased agelessly in pursuit of the members of his assumed new harem. First he chased Candy, then Ebby, then Flossie, then Candy again. As they each managed to sidestep his advances or twist out of his way he headed for the nearest alternative ewe, his energy and enthusiasm unbridled.

For a while I watched in amazement and absolute pleasure. Within moments the elderly sheep that had arrived had been transformed. Eventually however I did have to get on with other jobs so I left them all to their fun and games. Over the next few hours I kept returning to the sheep paddock to see what the state of play was and just before dark I saw them all in the bottom of the corner together as one flock. Phil was standing proudly and protectively in the centre, his three ewes were lying down gently nibbling at blades of grass.

‘You are sure he’s castrated aren’t you?’ Kelly questioned me suspiciously when she came back from work that evening and I had told he about the day’s excitement.

‘Well yes,’ I said, ‘it’s on his papers, the woman told me and I did have a good look underneath when I could.’

‘Well that’s lovely then,’ she agreed with me, ‘I just hope he is.’

In due course we never did receive that extra bag of feed from Wynnstay’s that we had been promised, but a donation did turn up in the bank account – although not one I would ever call sizeable. Nevertheless the important thing was that Phil settled in really well. He became devoted to the ewes and in him they identified a guardian. He had a beautiful, gentle nature to all around him whether sheep or human and liked nothing better than a good head rub when you were passing.

Phil was with us just four precious months though it will always seem like longer for the effect he had on us. One morning, when I wasn’t there he couldn’t get himself up. Kelly stayed with him to the very last moment as the vet eased his pain and then he left us, quietly and with a loving arm around his neck.

I will always regret that I wasn’t able to say goodbye to Phil and always regret that I hadn’t been at Kelly’s side when she had to make that most onerous of calls that is all too much part of what we do here.

We hope and believe however that in the few months he was with us that they were joyous and carefree ones that were a blessing in his final days.

 At the beginning of July I had booked into my diary one of those truly hectic days that Kelly moans at me for, but which I relish and which are very much a part of who I am. If I am not filling every hour of my day, then I feel that I am not fulfilling my obligation to life. It started with the usual early morning feeds and letting out of the animals and then between 10 am and 4 pm I had a work party joining me. They were a wonderful group who worked tirelessly and enthusiastically in the hot sun moving gravel, working on fencing and making enclosures. By the time they left I was exhausted, hot and a little dehydrated so I went into the house to give myself a few minutes before the next arrivals. We were expecting a group of Rainbows from Ross-on-Wye who would be arriving at 5 pm for an hour’s visit before I had to head off to the local village hall where I had a rock ‘n’ roll night to set up. Time really was of the essence and I just needed to grab a breath and more importantly perhaps for all around me, a shower.

Just before I put the water on, Kelly called out to me that Ellie had arrived. Ellie is our star volunteer who also helps run the Rainbows and she had come up early to make sure that she was on hand when the young girls started arriving.

‘Ellie?’ I called to her as she came round the corner, ‘I need to quickly get in the shower, you couldn’t just do the waters and a quick check round could you?’

‘Of course,’ she replied with her ever present smile and turned on her heel to grab some watering cans.

The shower was just what I needed to feel half-human again. I had just pulled on my trousers and a shirt when there was a tentative knock on our open front door.

‘Pete?’ it was Ellie’s quiet, slightly nervous voice. ‘Pete?’

‘You ok Ellie?’ I asked as I got to the door.

‘Pete, do you know your sheep has just had a lamb?’

‘What?’ I answered, not quite understanding the meaning of the words that Ellie was saying to me.

‘Your sheep has just had a lamb.’ She repeated.

‘A what?’ I was really struggling now.

‘A lamb.’

‘But she can’t have.’

‘But she has.’ Ellie replied nervously smiling.

Confusion filled every segment of my fatigue and heat addled brain. The simple statement of Ellie’s was not computing as our ewes couldn’t have a lamb as they hadn’t been with any uncastrated rams.

‘Show me.’ I stammered with a degree of panic rising in my stomach.

We walked down together to the sheep paddock and Ellie pointed out the obvious. Candy was stood proudly by a bloody and dirty but very much alive and rather robust newborn lamb.

It really did take my brain a longtime to take the information in and to subsequently put all the clues together.

In the preceding months several visitors had commented on the largeness of our ewes and when Lisa came to shear the sheep she gave us a stern warning that they were too fat (apart from Cecil) and needed to go on a diet or else they could well have heart attacks, especially with the summer coming. We resolved not to feed them anything other than the grass that they grazed on. They would be on a strict diet!

They may well have been well fed and nourished ewes, but simply fat? Nope, they were pregnant!

We called Candy’s baby Rainbow after the Rainbows who would be its first outside visitors. A week later Pickles arrived.

Our stance as a sanctuary is to rescue, not to breed and not to buy – the latter two compound the issues we are dealing with daily. But we can’t regret the birth of Rainbow and Pickles. They were massive surprises and we do chide ourselves for our carelessness or naivety, but in these two souls we feel we have  two parting gifts from Phil, a sheep who won our hearts in such a short span of time. A gentle creature that loved and lived to the last and showed that age is just a number, youthfulness can remain if it remains in your heart.