by TalkHunting Member Scott "Scott from Bama" Cobbs

On December 28th, 2004, at approximately 5:30 p.m., my wife and kids and I were enjoying a Sunday evening after the Christmas holidays.  We were winding down and glad that the rush was finally over.  Then the phone rang.  It was my wife’s mother on the line and she was terribly upset.  Although my wife answered the phone, I could hear that my mother-in-law was crying.  My wife was visibly shaken by the call and insisted that we leave immediately to go to her parent’s house.  When I asked her what was wrong, she said that her mother had said, “I think my ankle is broken and your dad is still outside holding the goat!  Get over here as quick as you can!”   We didn’t know what that meant but we jumped in the truck and away we flew to the in-laws house, which was about a ten-minute drive.

We pulled into their driveway not knowing what to expect and immediately met the unexpected!  On the front porch, looking in the front door was a large sheep.  It was a ram to be more precise, a four-horned Jacobean ram, about 150 to 200 pounds, with a bad attitude.  As soon as we came to a stop I opened my door to get out and ram-bo headed my way.  My father-in-law came to the door then and yelled to me, “Watch out, he’s mean!”  When I stepped out of the truck he came at me and I jumped into the bed of the truck to avoid being the next victim.  The ram stopped just short of butting the side of my truck with his large horns. Now I had just been cleaning my truck this evening and had realized that my pistol permit had expired, so I took my gun out of my truck and placed it in the house until I could get the permit renewed.  If not, this would have been a much shorter story.   I now had to make do with what I had at hand which was a short shovel in the bed of my truck, so I grabbed it and swung at the sheep catching him on the side of the head and horns.  

This only served to irritate the irate wooly-booger, who then backed up, shook his head and dared me to get out of the truck bed.  I had dropped the shovel on the ground when I struck the sheep with it, so now I was defenseless and stuck in the back of my truck.  I checked my toolbox, which is cluttered with junk and found a length of rope and decided that I would somehow have to get that sheep tied up before we could check on the in-laws.  So, rope in hand, and sheep standing only a few feet away, I jumped out of the truck picked up the shovel and swung at the ram as he charged.  The shovel caught the ram on the side of the head and didn’t even slow him down, so I grabbed him by the horns and we began to waltz around the yard, spiraling and spinning until I ended up beside the sheep, at which point I threw him to the ground and held on.  At about this time, my 12-year-old son came running around the front of the truck and helped me to get the rope on the ram’s feet and securely hog-tie my dance partner.
When we were convinced that the ram wasn’t going anywhere we went inside to check on my wife’s parents.  We found my mother-in-law lying prone on the floor in terrible pain with her ankle swelled to the size of a softball.  My father-in-law was covered with grass stains and blood and looking like a man who had just been in a fight. I guess because he had!

They told us what had happened before we got there.  When they returned home from volunteering at the hospital, they pulled into the drive and saw what they thought was a goat in their yard.  No big deal, they thought they would just call someone to come put it back in the fence.  When my mother-in-law stepped out of the pick-up and began to gather her things she was struck from behind by the ram.  When she got up and tried to get back in the truck she was struck again.  She then tried to make it to the house and was hit a third time, this time he knocked her down and she broke her ankle in the fall.  While this was happening, my father-in-law came running around from the other side of the truck to find this ram repeatedly charging his wife.  He threw some heavy books he was carrying at the aggressor trying to avert his attention.  It worked long enough to allow my father-in-law to grab the ram by the horns and wrestle with it until his wife could crawl into the house to call for help.  In the time that he was fighting with it, the ram managed to get him to the ground, gash his leg open, scrape him up somewhat, lose both his hearing aids, and break his arm.  He said that he didn’t know exactly how he managed to get away from the sheep and into the house.

After things had calmed down for a minute or two, I went outside to make sure the assailant was still tied up and under control.  Suddenly my father-in-law burst outside with his.38 snub-nosed revolver cursing at the sheep and began firing at it from about 20 feet away.  Amazingly the ram just laid there, calm as could be while the pistol was emptied and as my father-in-law continued to click on spent rounds.  I don’t think he touched him with a single shot.

My wife got both her parents to the hospital while I kept the kids and made sure the sheep was going nowhere. I called the guy that had sold the property to my in-laws and explained how someone should come and get this sheep or they might find it hanging from the meat-pole.  Apparently, this ram belonged to a lady he knew and she had got it for her daughter for Easter when it was a lamb and it had been kept in a pasture next door to my in-law’s house.
 
I left the sheep tied up in the front yard where the owner picked him up later that evening.  The local news showed up at my in-laws house the next day for an interview.  I don’t know how they found out as we didn’t call the sheriff’s department or make any reports.  In a local newspaper article a few days later, the owner of the ram was interviewed and she said that when they came to get it, its feet were tied so tightly that the circulation had been cut off (poor thing).  She also stated that it had obviously been beaten as there was a large stick nearby.  I was thinking, “Where the heck was this stick when I needed it?!”  The owner told the newspaper that the sheep had died a few days after the incident.  We all were very sad to hear that…..sort of.  The owner did call my in-laws and apologize for what had happened, but they weren’t compensated in any way. Both of my in-laws have since had surgery to put in pins and plates for their broken bones and my mother-in-law again had surgery on the 9th of January.  

They are now fully recovered and a bit wary of any animals they might find in their yard. As I stated before, this event was covered by the local paper and the local television news.  It was also picked up by the Rick & Bubba morning radio show and was even shown as a public interest story by CNN.  As if to add insult to injury, the CNN story had an accompanying picture of two small fuzzy lambs lying down together.  Luckily, in all the reports, I was known only as the son-in-law.   I wouldn’t want people to think that this 6 foot 2 inch; 225 pound country boy got his butt whipped by two little lambs!