The Drone and the Borrowed Ewe
My nephew's new drone landed on a ewe named Beatrice, who carried it across the pasture like a loud little hat with the flock behind her.
My nephew Caleb works for a company that does something with maps and satellites that I do not fully understand. Last fall he came to visit with a drone in a padded case and a lot of ideas. He said he could count my sheep in a minute. I said I could count them in two, and we shook on it.
The drone was a good one, white with four little arms, and it lifted off the lawn with a sound like a swarm of bees. It flew over the pasture in a neat pattern, and the sheep, who have seen tractors, trucks and a traveling circus once, did not even look up. My border collie, Juniper, watched with great suspicion. She does not approve of anything that moves in a straight line.
Then the battery light started blinking. Caleb said it would return to base automatically. It did not. It dropped, gently, in a slow descending spiral, and landed on the back of a ewe named Beatrice, who was grazing near the fence. For a moment nothing happened. Then Beatrice looked up, felt the weight and, being a sensible sheep, started walking.
She carried that drone across the entire pasture, the propellers still twitching, with the whole flock trotting after her like she was leading a parade. Caleb ran behind with a controller in his hand, calling, 'Beatrice, please, that is a four-thousand-dollar camera.' Beatrice did not slow down. Juniper joined the procession, rounding up everyone but the drone.
We got it back eventually. Beatrice stopped at the water tank, shook herself once, and the drone slid off into the grass without a scratch. The footage is the best thing Caleb has ever filmed, and he has a clip of it on farm.FM with a country song laid over the top. He counted the sheep that day, too. He got thirty-eight. The real number was forty. I said I had told him so.