New bale. It was quicker this time. Good technique with the tractor. Bashed the railing again. It creaked a bit, but it was OK. Brolle is often out in front. I don’t think he’s a leader. He’s just the stupidest, the one the others send over when they’re unsure what’s going on. The ram’s mind is fascinating, or perhaps it would be better to say that the meeting of the ram’s and the human’s minds is fascinating. When they’re alone in a flock with ewes, as Brolle is now, the ram is always the one to come forward first, coming up and sniffing around; he brings up the rear, close to the shepherd, when you’re driving the flock in front of you; and he loves being scratched on the back and on his throat. It’s easy to develop a close relationship, muck around playing with him, get him to walk alongside you and even to come when you call him. A ram can, with a little patience, become just like a dog. For a while, that is. Countless are the stories about people with small flocks getting close to their rams, talking about them like members of the family, before one day deciding with regret that they have to be sold or slaughtered. There’s always a turning point at which the ram can no longer handle the intimacy, and they start butting. Someone said this was because rams can’t really distinguish between friendship and rivalry, as though it’s the same thing in some way. I experienced this with our first ram, The Phantom. We used to cuddle like newlyweds, until one day he gave me a butt on the thigh, hard and emphatic. I was given some bad advice, that I should overpower him and lay him on his back so he would know his place. Once you understand how things work, it’s clear that in the long run a ram can only recognize two modes of existence—king of the hill or pushover. The Phantom seemed to accept his place as my obedient friend. Then he butted me again. I got him on his back again. After three days I got rammed again. I tried the same procedure and it worked—for thirty seconds. It was over. We weren’t friends anymore. I stayed away. Tending the flock became difficult. It sounds awful, but it was a relief when we slaughtered him. And it’s as though there’s something—evolution, the sheep gods, coincidence or some other supernatural force—that made it that way. If rams didn’t make themselves impossible to deal with after a while, we would never be able to slaughter them and then we wouldn’t have taken such good care of them from the start.