Welcome to the very first story for my blog! Hooray!
I’ve chosen to tell you about Lambo… #SheepToo as it is one of my oldest and most enduring stories.
It seems to get etched into people’s minds because… well? Let’s just jump right into it and see…
Don’t feel like reading? Listen to me tell the story.
When I was a small girl of about eight years old in New Zealand, I used to spend a lot of time with my parent’s friends’ kids on their deer farm in Christchurch.
The Ultimate Game
When night fell, our favourite thing was to play, ‘The Ultimate Game’.
One kid would sit with a large spotlight on the balcony that spanned the house and had the perfect view of the long driveway and series of paddocks out the front. The rest of us would run way down the driveway to our starting point.
It was our mission to climb over or somehow get through the paddock fences and make our way through the fields full of animals to our final destination, under the house, without getting spotted by our spotter on the balcony.
This was no mean feat. There were two long paddocks with little creeks and many skittish deer with not TOO much foliage to hide behind. But the final paddock to make it through before the glory of victory, was Lambo’s paddock.
Enter Lambo…
Lambo was this deer farm’s only sheep. Lambo was a pet sheep. Rob and his kids stumbled across this pitiful little lamb on the side of the road one day in the 1980s not long after the hit film Rambo came out.
He had clearly been abandoned by his mother and was going to die if they left him there. So they christened him Lambo, took him home, and welcomed him to the family. I can’t imagine what it was about that tiny, cute, helpless baby lamb that reminded them of Sylvester Stallone’s revenge filled, murderous madman on a rampage… But who knows? Maybe it was a prophecy…
Sheep are not solitary animals. They like to flock together. The family’s other pet was a big rottweiler dog called Max. Sometimes Lambo would try to flock together with Max. Sometimes Max would let him. If he ever got into the deer paddocks he would happily flock with them too. The kids would play in his paddock with him, and they would tear around the farm on horses and motorbikes while Lambo tried to join in.
But like all babies, Lambo didn’t stay a lamb forever. By this night when we were playing The Ultimate Game, Lambo was a full-grown sheep.
Let the game begin!
I was one of the youngest and the only girl who used to play this game. I didn’t know I was a girl back then even if everyone else did, so I was 100% in it to win it.
We were all gathered behind the old shed at the bottom of the farm, and the spotter signalled he was about to start our ten second reprieve. In these ten seconds we would have to scale the maybe four meter high fence, and find a hiding space where we could regroup, and plot our next move before the dreaded spotlight came into play…
“NOW!”
It was on!
Seven or eight of us kids frantically climbed the fence, jumped down the other side, and scattered in all different directions. I heard one boy catch his shoe on the way down and expel some language one might not expect to hear from one so small… unless they grew up on a farm in New Zealand…
No time to look back. This was every kid for themselves.
Most of the others ran off to the right or down the centre. This day the far left was calling me and I successfully made it to shelter.
For the spotter, the time when they first turn around is the best time to ‘take out’ the most people, as that is when we runners are most vulnerable. It is pitch black.
Is this really a good hiding space? Am I going to make it before he turns around? I didn’t think it was that far…
It is also the time we make the most noise. This time was no exception.
“Spotted Brendon!”
“Spotted Craig!”
I was hunkered down behind a bush so I didn’t see the humiliating light bathe them as he shouted. Just stay still and wait for this initial frenzy to be over Claire… You’ve got this.
Time to get serious
I could hear some of my fellow competitors starting to make their next move across the paddock. So could our spotter. The light darted to the other side of the paddock. This was my chance.
My feet were air that night. I made a good distance narrowly missing a resting deer I hadn’t anticipated.
The time you are most vulnerable is when you have to get through the four-metre-high fences. If you were lucky you might ‘find’ a weak point and ‘help’ it into an eight-year-old sized hole, but that was somewhat ‘frowned upon’ by our parents… Otherwise you had to pick a spot and make the climb as quickly and quietly as possible, because every good spotter knows to keep checking back here.
“Spotted Mark!”
Another one down! And over the other side from me! I made my move and YES! Fence number two successfully defeated.
And holy crap, I think I was winning! WAY ahead of the other guys. This could be it! The moment I had been waiting for…
Into Lambo’s territory
Calm down Richardson… You’ve still got to scale one fence to Lambo’s paddock, and then the last fence before the glory of victory under the house. It is by no means assured…
Right…
Our spotter was well focused on fence number two and surrounds now, not thinking anyone had made it further up. This was another window I had to take before they got jumpy and started scanning again. He thinks he’s onto someone down there…
I slowly scaled the fence by one of the posts in the hope of blending in. Stay down by that fence, spotter… Stay down by that fence… The trick at the top is to stay low, oh, and not fall down the other side with a loud thud. So far so good, but still in the danger-zone.
SUCCESS! I was in and secure! Woohoo! I don’t think I had ever made it this far before. What a freakin’ hero!
But this is a dangerous spot. It is so close to the house now. The slightest noise can tip off the spotter. Now was the time to be more vigilant than ever. I had to get around Lambo’s little pond and over the other fence without making ANY noise.
“Spotted Paul!”
Ooooh! Another one down! More language unbecoming of children…
The silence quickly fell upon us again, until I heard this grunting noise behind me. What the…?
What the..?
I turned my head just enough to catch the sight of Lambo bounding up behind me, extending his full-grown sheep’s body to wrap his hooves around my eight-year-old little waist, and start going to town on me, like a horny little dog on its owner’s leg. What the..?
Luckily I had a horny little dog at home, so I knew what was happening. At full extended height, Lambo was about the same height as I was, and the power of horniness had given him super-sheep strength.
DAMNIT! He was going to give my position away! How would I extract this big horny bastard without getting spotted ??
Mercifully his grunting wasn’t TOO loud. I grabbed each hoof with each of my hands and tried with all of my strength to unlock his vice-like grip. GODDAMNIT LAMBO! And why wouldn’t this family have him desexed? What was Lambo ever going to do with his libido??
Okay, try again…
I couldn’t make any noise, but in my head I was screaming with the effort, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”
I finally prised Lambo’s locked hooves from my waist, rolled along the ground a short distance, sat up, and faced the horny devil. We locked eyes. “Bring it Lambo,” mine were saying. Lambo snorted and grunted loudly, then ran off.
The spotlight darted to my position. Mercifully I was still concealed behind a bush. Okay Claire, don’t flinch, don’t breathe…
The light hovered for a second, followed my attempted rapist momentarily, before coming back to the scene of the crime.
“Bloody Lambo,” I heard the spotter mutter. If only he knew!!
The light then went back to scanning the fences further down.
The pressure is on!
DAMN that was close. In SO many ways. Get it together Richardson. Who knows how long you’ve got before Lambo comes back for round two? It’s time to win this thing! It’s now or never!
“Spotted Sam!”
Perfect. Sam was spotted still back in the second paddock.
There was a little tear in the fence I thought I could manoeuvre so I could slide through next to one of the far posts. Scaling the fence this close is almost suicide.
I worked it a little. Keep it quiet Claire. You can do this.
I saw the light swing violently my way and darted quickly back behind a bush. Breath held.
No call. Phew!
The spotter was looking everywhere now. I was not going to have the luxury of so many others distracting him anymore.
I crept back to the spot, slid through, and made the dash to victory.
“MADE IT!” I shouted.
The sweet taste of victory!
Expletives from the spotter, cheers from those who were already ‘out’ and waiting at the top. No one ever expected me to do it. But glory was mine and it tasted good.
It was now time for me to take the ultimate prize. It was my turn to be the spotter and I KNEW I would kick arse at it.
But of course, Mum and Dad decided it was time to go home before I could take up the honour. Oh well, maybe next time…
How did I feel about my first sexual assault being by a sheep? Okay technically it was our horny little dog, but puppy leg humping doesn’t count…
I reflected on how Kiwis are often referred to as ‘sheep shaggers’ by outsiders, particularly Aussies, due to the country having more sheep than people. But who are REALLY the predators here?? Maybe it is not that cut and dried…
#SheepToo
And what became of Lambo? He kicked around for a few more years and increasingly began living up to the behaviour of his namesake. He started ramming into other animals and even the kids on their bikes and horses. After one particularly bad incident with the youngest daughter, they decided that Lambo, much like his namesake, was a menace to society and had to be taken out.
Although his stealth skills were impressive for a sheep, Rambo he was not. He met his demise one sunny afternoon with a bullet to the head from the oldest son, who once so lovingly reared him.
RIP Lambo you crazy, horny, lonely old sheep. You added a new dimension to those whose lives you touched, and certainly provided many a good story in The Ultimate Game of your life.
The End
Thanks for reading and/or listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please like and share on social media. I’m on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin and my handle is @ClaireRWriter.
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Until next time!
