Never Let a Sheep Drive

I bought hay yesterday. When I got home, I decided I was too tired to unload it, so I parked the truck up near the house and figured I'd feed the sheep out of it for a day or two until I got around to storing the hay bales in the barn.

So this morning I got up, threw a few flakes of hay from the back of the truck to the sheep, and went to work.

When I got home I parked the car, dropped my purse and groceries in the house, let the dog out, and headed for the truck. It wasn't there. Before my panic fully developed, I spotted it down near the barn. Then I really gasped. I could see the faint tire tracks slightly off the right side of the drive leading from where I had left the truck to where it now stood. It had taken a fairly straight path along the garden fence, over a shovel handle, near or over a good-sized rock (not sure about that), and then rolled smoothly to a slight rise about 8 feet from the shearing pen where it luckily came to a stop.

Apparently the truck had slipped out of gear. I've had trouble with it doing that a couple times before, so I always double-check that it's firmly in first gear when I park it. The emergency brake is more a brake in name than in fact. If you drive with it on, the most you usually notice is a decrease in gas mileage.

My guess is that a ram or two put their hooves on the back bumper to try to reach the hay in the truck bed. They've done this before. However, this time they appear to have set the truck in motion. It is very lucky that no sheep or lambs or chickens got run over as the truck made its way downhill. Everyone seems fine, including the truck. Me, however, I'm still shaking a bit with "what-could-have-happened" thoughts. Lesson learned.

I took this picture from where I parked the truck. It traveled a fair distance.