Rural Legends?

You’ve all heard of cow tipping, right? This is the semi-mythical rural American ritual where young, usually drunken country boys go out to cow pastures late at night when “de cows is sleeping standing up”. Three or four of the burliest young drunkards sneak up on the “sleeping” cow and charge it with shoulders lowered like the front line of a football squad. The idea is that since the cow is fast asleep and its balance mechanisms are shut down that the charging drunks will somehow be able to knock the cow over…or “tip” it.

Is the phenomenon of cow tipping fact or fiction? Well, only those of us who were drunk and stupid enough in our youth to attempt a cow-tipping will ever know….because we were all sworn to secrecy concerning the events of May 23, 1982 (12:47 AM).

However, today I did discover that another rural legend is not a legend at all. I want to reveal the startling truth behind a deadly threat to sheep populations around the world.

The following events occurred as I was biking across the Oudespaarndammer polder on my way up to Spaarnwoude to do a little mountain biking. (The Spaarn is a large local river, so a lot of things are named after it). This particular polder sits right on the outskirts of Haarlem and is still used for grazing sheep and cows. It’s a great jumping off point to quickly get out of the city on a hot day. I was on a narrow single-track gravel trail, my MP3 player blasting some old Boston tune directly into my brain stem, and I was just starting to get into a good groove for putting a lot of kilometers behind me in a hurry, when about half way across the polder I noticed a dog sitting in the trail ahead of me. Not unusual. But the woman who jumped out of the thickets, frantically waving me over to the side was definitely out of the ordinary.

I could see her mouth moving very quickly as I pulled off the trail. I took out my ear speakers and asked her in respectable Dutch to please repeat her question….which she did, but way to fast and frenzied for me to understand. All I could hear from her was “Sheep”, “Back”, “Dead”, and “Help” – not necessarily in that order for those of you who know the somewhat bizarre word ordering of the Dutch language.

“Het spijt me. Mijn Nederlands is niet zo good. Kunt u iets langzaam spreken astublieft?” I asked her in pretty respectable Dutch. At this point she picked up on the non-native accent and like 99% of the rest of the people in Holland, she went right into flawless English.

“There is a sheep in the field over here.” She said pointing across the polder. “He is on his back and he is going to die unless we get him up.”

Confused, blank stare from me.

“Can you help me to stand the sheep up?” she asked slowly, as if I was daft.

I looked around, just to assess the situation and make sure that there weren’t any “surprises” waiting for me in the weeds. Most of all I was worried that there would be a whole elaborate setup from one of those “hidden camera” shows filming me as the butt of some bizarre Dutch joke. “Look at this American dork. He stopped to help a woman flip over a sheep. HA HA!”.

After feeling confident that there was no one else around, I said “Sure” with more than a little bit of a smile on my face and skepticism in my voice. I leaned my bike against the fence and followed the woman across the polder toward a group of what looked to me like comfortably resting sheep.

“How do you know that a sheep on it’s back is unable to get up?” I asked in a sarcastic tone.

“I read about it in a book.” She said. “If they are not yet sheered and have a lot of wool on them, they can roll onto their backs but can not flip back over.”

It sounded pretty ridiculous and in the same mythical genre as “cow tipping”. I turned around again to check to see if someone was stealing my bike. Still there. No one else around.

As we got closer to the sheep, they started to get up from their naps, obviously annoyed at the intrusion, and began trotting away from us. All except one.

The sheep still on the ground let out a horrific, bleating scream. His legs started flailing wildly in the air, and if it weren’t so pathetic to see, it would have actually been quite comical. It twisted its head from one side to the other and tried with every muscle to stand up. You could almost hear it shouting “Help! I fallen down and I can’t get up!”

We walked toward the gyrating sheep, and it flailed even more as it saw us closing in. But as we stood over the him, he seemed to calm down. Anticipating our next move.

I looked over at the woman, with a little more respect now, and asked her how we do this? She looked back at me and laughed. “I don’t know.”

So, we both just stooped down, grabbed onto the thick wool and gave him a quick yank off his back. He was remarkably light….all wool…and when his feet hit the ground he bolted off with the rest of his compatriots.

I stood there somewhat stunned at what I had just witnessed. We walked quietly back to the path and said goodbye.

For some reason, all I could think about for the rest of my bike ride was going to the Bor Snackbar down the street to get some take-out for dinner. Their shoarma is excellent.