The tomato is always redder on the other side of the fence

Every morning when I’d go out to feed the birds, the squirrels and my sheep I’d stop at my garden and admire how magnificent the vegetables, particularly my tomatoes were doing. The plants were growing like crazy and I was so excited to see the fruit get larger and larger, monitoring the size every day and imagining the ½ inch slices sitting on top of bread toasted ever so lightly with nothing but a slather of mayonnaise, salt and pepper. Yum mee.

I was not the only one who had these thoughts obviously. Today when I went out to feed the birds, the squirrels and my sheep, I walked to my garden to do my usual chest out, how proud and wonderful everything looked stance when my eyes just zoomed right into an empty hole! A HOLE, a huge hole. A hole that in my eyes looked like the size of the Grand Canyon! It was the place my once gorgeous, green, huge, loaded stalks of perfect tomato producing plant once stood. There was nothing, not even a remnant of the once bulging bush of future tomato sandwiches. Did something swoop down from the sky and pluck it right out of the earth? Did a hungry Chinaman reach up and suck it to the other side of the globe? What happened, where was my tomato plant?? I couldn’t take my eyes off the hole! When I did, to my aghast, there was another hole! Another grand tomato bush gone, swiped from its happy home to only be gone like the other one by its side. Who could do such a dastardly thing, what could do such a dastardly thing. And then I knew.

Who comes wandering over to my garden but my sheep, Buddy. And what does Buddy do? He climbs up the fence with his two front legs poking his hooves in the wire and pushes with his entire body weight the fence that is his paddock, only to watch it lean forward and allow him to stretch his neck out far enough to reach my precious plants. Grrrrrrr. I don’t mind sharing, I don’t mind buying him special apple cookies, nothing but the best alfalfa and sweet feed mixed with non-sweet feed, but, when he begins to steal my future tomato sandwiches, he has crossed the line, or, should I say the “fence.” I looked in his paddock, and sure enough, there were the remains of two once tall, full, lush, overloaded gorgeous tomato plants with nothing but 6 inch stalks on a bald root ball. There were two, but they were unidentifiable as to which was which. I couldn’t tell which was my beautiful beefstake or which was the big boy. At the stage of destruction there was no identifying marks or fruit to tell me how to address the now defunct plant. Forensic tests I needed. Where is CSI when you need them? I just hope Buddy appreciated my generosity to let HIM have the first ripened fruit instead of myself. How he could eat it without mayonnaise, salt and pepper on perfectly toasted white bread though is beyond me, but, then again, he too was probably watching it daily for that ripened perfection and couldn’t wait any longer and decided to make his move before I did on the fruit. Bad Buddy, baaaaaaaaaaaaad Buddy. Note to self. Sheep do not share.