Unyielding strength

It wasn’t just a dag. It was her tail, or rather what was left of it. Severed, decaying and containing two of her vertebrae, it doggedly clung to life by mere shreds of flesh. It was as if in its withered state, it refused to give up hope of being whole again. But the rot had set in too deep and its reunion with her body was an impossibility.

Roulette’s battered and bruised form told the story of her recent past, one etched in pain and desperation. There was more to her tale than what the police encountered when they halted her wild dash down the busy highway. There were more than the surface injuries visible to us. The way she recoiled from human touch told of long, harsh years as part of a flock, a life designed to serve, perhaps as a breeder, until age deemed her no longer economically valuable.

But at first blush with Roulette, we readily recognised her pricelessness.

She had been on the final journey, her destiny sealed aboard a truck headed for the slaughterhouse. But this stoic lass had plans of her own. Somewhere along the way, whether by instinct or sheer will to live, she leaped, or perhaps fell, from the moving vehicle. The evidence of her collision with the hard asphalt was written across her body. And although her body was torn and broken, as she carried the brutal marks of that terrible encounter, we asked: what of her mind?

The flies, too, had found her. Her untreated wounds, particularly at her hindquarters, had become a sickly invitation. The sight of writhing maggots told us how eagerly they had answered it.

And yet, despite the excruciating pain, despite her fear of the hands that sought to help her, Roulette chose life. She clung to it with an unyielding strength, grazing on the lush, green grass we offered her, though her mouth bore its own battle scars. A gaping wound pierced her lower lip, right through to the other side, necrotic and unhealed. One of her four remaining wobbly teeth had driven itself deep and painfully into her lower lip. It took some coaxing from us to get it to release. Even so, she chewed and chewed, her determination unfaltering.

Roulette has not cheated death once or twice, but three times.

She lived a life few sheep ever know—a life long enough to see old age. She escaped the butcher’s blade, surviving the violence of her fall, the flies and the infection. And in doing so, she showed us something profound.

Sheep deserve more, so much more than the cold, indifferent systems that see them as mere numbers. They deserve more than the blinkered views that fail to see them for the resilient, sentient beings they are. And now, given the chance, Roulette has found that “more” at sanctuary, a place where her life is valued and free to live as she always deserved.

Footnote to this story: Roulette’s journey reminds us of another stoic and aged sheep who came into our care, Miss Clementine. Much like Roulette, dear Miss Clem had spent her life in fear, conditioned to view humans as foes rather than friends. The scars of this were etched into her weary body—one legacy of this her missing right eye—all testaments to the hardships she had endured. Yet, life at sanctuary changed Miss Clementine’s view of the world, and we trust Roulette’s experience here will too mirror that.

*Australian slang for faeces-caked wool around a sheep’s rear.