At the Repaire de Biquette in Maisonneuve Park, our sheep are particularly adorable this year, and not very boisterous, with the exception of Chalette, a charismatic grandmother, and Madrid, a great sycophant, but we forgive these two everything. Two sister lambs, Violette and Joséphine, are a delight to behold. Their happy little faces, their eagerness to stay at their mother’s side, the way they have of never straying far from each other and the little catastrophic trot they adopt when they understand that a little distance separates them…
I have always observed animals: this livestock that I watch over with a mixture of keen attention and affection, the horses whose power and grace dazzle me, my cat Moka, whose features seem to have been sketched by someone who was really having a great day. I even like to look at animals on Instagram.
When I visited the Musée de la chasse et de la nature in Paris — a large cabinet of curiosities mainly devoted to the study of the evolution of the bond that connects humans to their environment through art — I brought back a few books to feed my fascination. In the pile, there is this strange little essay with a rhinoceros on it by the British writer John Berger (Héros-Limite editions, 2011), entitled Why look at animals?a question that obsesses me.
This summer, my fourth as a shepherdess, I realize that, yes, I continue to observe the sheep, but I understand that a new dimension broadens my perspective. Now, somewhat in spite of myself, I also observe the people who watch the animals.
Shepherdess’s Confidence Number 1: I notice that I am less patient with humans this year. Of course, I am happy to answer questions about eco-grazing, the life of sheep, hoof care, shearing, etc. How is it that a black lamb can be born to white parents? Sheep are more interesting than you might think. I love it when people who grew up among them, on other continents, tell me their memories. We compare our sheep, and suddenly we are colleagues. But I notice that I have a shorter fuse when faced with certain remarks and certain behaviors.
No, you can’t pet sheep, especially when they’re on the move; they’d eventually get tired of it, and Biquette isn’t an urban zoo. That said, I can totally understand this desire, because it was for the privilege of burying my hand through the thickness of their wool that I became a shepherdess. Next to the pink skin, under the two or three inches of frizz, the fresher wool is an immaculate white so vibrant that it seems to emit light. Shepherdess’s confidence number 2: yes, we shepherdesses and shepherds pet the sheep if they come near us and there’s no one around. And my sweet, how we spoil ourselves! Their frilly fleece impregnates the hand with a scent that is both animal and vegetable. It smells of wheat, hay, the countryside and a more earthy note: that of lanolin, this beautiful word which designates the slightly gummy wool wax which is deposited on our hands.
Confidence number 3: when we bring the sheep into the sheepfold at the end of the day and after eating, the animals lie down in the clean sawdust that smells of dry wood (one of the most comforting scents in the world), ewes, rams, ewe lambs and lambs huddle together to form a big, fluffy eiderdown, a quilt of white, cream, fudge, caramel, reddish black, and dark black. And this vision of all the animals gathered in the mildness of the evening to doze off gives the shepherdess that I am an immense calming effect: an emotion. At night when I can’t sleep, I don’t count the sheep (believe me, it’s not at all sleepy for a shepherdess), but I think of them, gathered in woolly balls in the sheepfold.
I got a bit sidetracked while writing because I mainly wanted to answer, in this column, a very legitimate question that people ask me: “Are sheep intelligent?” This question annoys and worries me, because it forces me to make the following observation: we humans have an anthropocentric vision of the world.
In a passage of the essay Why look at animals?John Berger looks at the arrival of zoos in Europe and the often disappointed reaction of visitors: “Why don’t these animals meet my expectations?”
First, we should put the question in the plural, “Are sheep intelligent?” because sheep are gregarious, plural in their essence. A lone sheep would be unhappy, stressed, probably depressed — sheep do not abandon their fellows. Not because they are morally superior to us, but rather because, plump and fat, slow, planted on four little twig legs, shod with hooves rather than sturdy hooves, and equipped with incisors on the lower jaw only, they have nothing to threaten, nothing to defend themselves with other than strength in numbers, unity and collectivity. Their strategy, when faced with imminent danger, is to gather together. I repeat: when things are going badly (and even when things are going well, all the time in fact), they stay together, protect themselves, watch over each other. It is we who follow them, in fact… And that brings me, the shepherdess, looking at the close-knit community of Ovis ariesto answer the question of the intelligence of sheep with another question (especially when I see a cyclist riding at full speed in the park in an Olympic costume and trying, with theatrical exasperation, to slalom between twenty balls of wool crossing the path): “Are humans as intelligent as they think they are?”
Last confidence of a shepherdess: I can’t wait to see the film Shepherd by Sophie Deraspe, adapted from the novel Where do you come from, shepherd? by Mathyas Lefebure, the story of an advertising executive who leaves everything behind to become a shepherd in Provence. The film will be presented at TIFF next month and its theatrical release is scheduled for November. I’ll tell you more about it.