Page 143 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK FOUR Volume 1 "Northcote 1984 to 1998"

numerous motorists pulling alongside and overtaking on our 90 mile or so journey home.
Soay’s are also very independent and self sufficient but it wasn’t until around 1992 that we
managed to find them a male companion.

They are a ‘Rare Breed’; that is, few in number and their future is endangered.
The main reason we bought them was because they are excellent for keeping pasture in
good condition.
They will eat the grass that many other animals such as our heavy horses, will not
normally eat. Apart from this benefit, they are very attractive to look at and frequently
comic in their mannerisms. They all have horns, female and male and can jump quite high
when the mood takes them!

‘Enderby’ came in 1992 and during that year all the females had at least one lamb, some
had two. Enderby was a very attractive feral breed Ram but not a Soay. In fact he was a
‘North Ronaldsay’, a slightly larger breed, again from the island of that name in the
Western Isles. He had been living at a ‘petting’ type farm for visitors at a village not too far
away. The farm had closed down and he came to us.

Enderby had beautiful well developed curly horns and other well developed things too. The
soay females were very excited to say the least. Before we move on, why his name
Enderby?
We named him after the relatively local village where he was born, Mavis Enderby!

It so happened then, that towards the end of that year we had a ‘surplus’ number of young
soay type sheep and had to move them on.

An advert was placed in the local paper and a young lady from Boston came to see them
with a view of buying several as a surprise Christmas Gift for her ex butcher father.
She knew her father had a large garden and they could serve a dual purpose of
entertainment and mobile ‘lawn mowers’.

She bought four or maybe it was six, the price was very reasonable and she duly collected
her surprise gift on Christmas eve.
We heard the last but one episode in this tale from a friend, who was also a neighbour of
‘the’ father who lived just a few gardens away on a very up market road on the very edge
of Boston, not far from the Pilgrim Hospital.

Evidently, Christmas morning arrived and the young sheep were no longer in the garden
where the daughter had left them.
But…. a distraught neighbour telephoned to ask if they knew anything about the strange,
small, horned, woolly animals that had invaded their garden and were gradually eating
their way through the lovely flower beds?

They had in fact jumped three garden fences and hedges to find the one they preferred!