I work at one of the finest land grant institutions in North America. Every night when I leave work and head north out of town, I drive past the Sheep Teaching and Research Unit. The Unit is a group of older barns that sit a ways off the road. The section of land around the barns is surrounded by your standard barbed wire fence. The sheep, mixed with a handful of goats, graze the grass around the Unit. It is always a pick-me-up to drive by and see the animals in the pasture, especially after lambing season when the lambs are turned loose on the world. I could watch the lambs run around all day, kicking, bleating and acting like little bad-asses.
A funny thing, (and I wish I had a picture of this) is when there is a breakout from the pasture. If you know farm life at all, you know that almost how hard you try to keep animals in, they will find a way out. So on occasion, an animal or two will get out of the fence.
In the Bible, it says something about sheep going to heaven and goats going to hell. I know now this may be true, at least in the context of animal intelligence. Sheep, they don’t escape very often, but when they do, they use their limited smarts to make the best of the opportunity and hit the good, fresh grass across the street from the Center.
Goats, on the other hand, are dumb. They escape on a frequent basis. In fact, those goats are almost always out of the fence. That’s not dumb, you say? Being able to escape sounds like real intelligence, you say? Not so fast, my friend. Sure the goats can get out of the pen, but you know what they do? Instead of finding greener pastures, the goats will stand on the outside side of the fence and stick their heads back INTO the pen in order to eat the very same grass they just spent all day trying to get away from.
Folks, that’s animal stupidity.
THE COACH HAYS 