Ask the two University of Montana students who tried to capture a rogue sheep on Mount Sentinel on Thursday evening. But don't ask them how to catch one.
“The sheep happened to be a lot faster than it appeared,” said Marty Greye, environmental studies major at UM.
No one knows where the sheep came from, but when April Christofferson looked through her office window Thursday and noticed a domestic sheep grazing on Mount Sentinel, she knew she had to do something. She's gotten calls from people all over town willing to help.
And two Missoula animal shelters have already offered to take care of the sheep when it's finally captured.
“Of course, we were immediately very concerned,” she said. “I knew she shouldn't be out there.”
Christofferson was worried about the sheep being eaten by coyotes or hit by a car, so she called Missoula Animal Control, which agreed to send an officer out to try to catch the sheep. Meanwhile, Christofferson was still concerned, so she stopped a passing car Thursday.
“Two young men pulled up and I asked them if they would be willing to help,” she said.
Greye and his friend Griffin Johnson were on their way to the UM fitness center to lift weights.
“We're like, ‘For sure,' ” Greye said. “We'll definitely get down on catching a sheep.”
Both environmental studies majors, they are always on the lookout for wild animals on the mountain, Greye said.
“We noticed what we thought was a mountain goat,” he said. “It turned out that it was a domestic sheep.”
When Greye lived in Wisconsin before coming to UM, he worked on a sheep ranch, so he knew how to work with them - or at least he thought he did.
“Chasing a sheep up and down a mountain isn't anything new,” he said. “I definitely knew the animal could move, but I wasn't expecting the adventure we had. Back home in Wisconsin we just have little hills.”
When animal control officer Courtney Bagnell arrived, the rescuers realized that the job wasn't going to be as easy as they had hoped.
“When I first got the call, I was hoping it was going to be easy,” Bagnell said. “Obviously sheep are amazing rock climbers.”
The problem was that Mount Sentinel is big and steep. And the rescuers didn't have any options other than chasing the critter.
“I had considered darting, where you drug the animal,” Bagnell said. “With the sheep in full fleece you're gonna have some trouble hitting any muscle with all that wool.”
As soon as they approached the frightened ewe, she bolted.
“It was quite a rodeo,” Christofferson said.
Greye and Johnson chased the sheep for more than an hour and eventually cornered her next to Washington-Grizzly stadium. A few students saw the commotion and tried to help by crowding around the sheep, hoping to keep it cornered until Animal Control arrived. But the wall of students couldn't contain the terrified animal.
“It busted through like we were playing red rover,” Greye said.
The sheep made it back to the mountain and the rescuers decided to call it a night.
On Friday, Missoula Animal Control found a way to catch the animal.
“A sheepherder is taking a dog up there and they'll hopefully get the sheep cornered and rope it,” Bagnell said.
But the herder can't make it out until Sunday. In the meantime, Bagnell said that people need to keep clear of the animal. If they try to capture or chase the sheep, they could end up hurting it or chasing it into traffic.
“It's definitely out of the ordinary,” Bagnell said. “This is definitely the first sheep call I've come in contact with.”
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Doug wrote on Nov 22, 2008 7:28 PM: