Flaming Rope

This THING is a sheep. No really, it or rather she, is a sheepie who missed a shearing. The man who recently bought her and her companions asked me over to shear for him as I wanted the wool and he wanted bald sheep. It worked out.

Unfortunately, this poor girl had to wait two weeks after her buddies were sheared because I did something stupid. If you don't ever have to lasso anything, count yourself lucky. If you do ever have to lasso and you don't know what you're doing, remember rule number one. ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES. It seems simple really. Common sense even. But sometimes you might get really excited because you've got the rope and the sheep is like RIGHT THERE. And you know you can just wham bam lasso that sheep on the very first toss.

But trust me, a rope burn hurts. It can rip off your skin and leave you with blisters and pain for two weeks straight. You'll be real embarrassed about how stupid you were for tossing that lasso even if you did catch the sheep on the first try...

And if you have to shear four sheep after you've burned your hand with a rope and super-glued the fingers over to prevent further pain, you'll soon discover that no amount of dips in a bucket of ice water will stop the throbbing ache and soreness. You'll have to stop hand shearing at sheep number three.

And leave poor sheep number four for the day when your hand heals all up and you can actually use it again for regular day-to-day stuff like grasping a pen, typing on a keyboard, milking your goat or cow--or holding on to the steering wheel of your truck. Let's not even talk about sewing or handshakes. Ew handshakes with a rope-burned zombie apocalypse hand. Gross!

So two weeks later, sheepie number four was quite happy to see me. I think she remembered that I gave out free haircuts. She stood right there, still and eyeing me when I (with my gloves on) gently dropped the lasso around her neck. She didn't even move when I tied the other end to the post. She was a good girl the whole time and it only took me about 20 minutes to baldify her and return her back to her buddies.

In case you forget rule number one, I will be only so happy to remind you via the last picture I leave you with. I couldn't sleep the first night after I received this grievous wound. I had to take pain meds. I had to pop the blisters because it felt like my hand was going to explode. The blisters were ever so much worse than the picture I'll post, because the picture is already a week after the injury.

And I highly recommend keeping superglue handy as an instant bandage. It helped me so much. I wouldn't have been able to shear a single sheepie that day if I hadn't glued the heck out of myself that morning.


RULE #1 of Lassoing: Always wear your gloves.