The Creatures from the Black Lagoon!

You generally hear about ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’ but this is a tale about two of them!

One sunny day this summer, I was walking on Uldale Common in Cumbria on one of my usual walks. I often pass a marshy area of ground which is really pretty and, because it floods into a small lake regularly, has various flowers like yellow flags (irises) in it. I’d noticed a bit of a path past part of the marsh but never gone down the steep banking to walk it – as it had been quite dry weather for a while, I decided to have a change and walk down there.

As soon as I descended to the part-time lake, I realised there wasn’t really a path as such but just an intermittent area of dry ground at the foot of the banking. There were many excursions up the banking needed to get past some parts which were still underwater and some patches of what looked like dry ground but swallowed your foot when you trod on it!

It was while traversing a section of the banking, I noticed a sheep lying alone. It’s very unusual for a sheep to be away from the rest of the flock so I wondered what was wrong. As I peered at her, and she stared back, I realised she was within the boundary of the marsh and could possibly be stuck. I went to investigate…

The sheep was near the bottom left hand edge and not visible from many angles

As I neared her, she panicked and tried to struggle away and I saw she was indeed stuck and only her back and head were sticking out of the ground. Talking to her to calm her, I slowly approached… she was well and truly sunk! I could see it was a ‘shoes-off’ job and took them off – shame I didn’t remember to remove my expensive altimeter watch and rings.

At first, I stood on the bank and managed to grab her horns to try to drag her out. However, sheep are heavy and she was well stuck so I started to worry I’d break her neck. Oh well – time to get in!

I waded knee deep into the thick, black sludge, feeling it sucking at my feet. At least I was getting a free mudpack! I reached down into the thick slime to see if I could locate her front legs. I managed to find the first one and pulled her upwards by that and one horn and her front end came up a bit. It wasn’t enough however, so I had to let her go again – I managed to place her front foot on slightly firmer ground first though.

Diving down again, I managed to locate her other front leg and tried again – nope – still firmly stuck. I placed that leg on the firmer ground too. Luckily, by now, she’d realised I didn’t mean her any harm and was trying to help so she was working with me rather than against me. But there wasn’t much she could do to help at that stage!

I tried lifting her backend by her fleece and her tail to no avail. It would have to be a dive down for the back legs then… My arms went in up to my shoulders as I hunted around for her legs. I found one quite easily but couldn’t find the other and realised I needed both really to get her out without damage.

Eventually, after much fishing around, I found her other hind leg and loosened that. Rather than lift her by her legs, I swapped to putting one hand on a rear leg and the other underneath her body and hauling. Sheep are very heavy but she was quite a lightweight one thankfully and, once I’d got her unstuck, she started to come up nicely.

Fortunately, as I hauled her upwards and forwards towards the drier ground, she started to help with her front feet and eventually dragged herself free and staggered up onto the dry bank.

At this point, I found just how much gratitude livestock give when you do them a favour – none whatsoever. She looked around in horror at me and two thoughts came into her mind…

“Eeek! a horrible, black, smelly human! I’ll leave it stuck in the bog”

swiftly followed by,

“GRASSSSS!!”

On spotting the grass, she instantly stopped worrying about me and the fact that her front legs weren’t really working and started eating as fast as her single row of teeth would chomp (sheep only have one set of teeth). She was absolutely starving! No idea how long she’d been in there. She was lucky she hadn’t met the same fate as the lamb I once found in a bog though… the birds had got to that while it was still alive and removed kidneys and whatever else they could peck down to. It didn’t live much longer…

I proceeded to drag myself out of the thick sludge – I felt like my feet were being pulled off but eventually managed to escape to the bank myself. We were both completely caked in black sludge. It was at this point I realised about my watch and rings – my watch luckily says it’s ‘water resistant’ – I hoped it was. I was thankful my rings hadn’t pulled off as they so easily could have.

I was rather worried about her front legs and not sure whether she was just weak with hunger, struggling and her enforced immobility so I sat on the bank and watched her for a while. In the end, I decided I might as well call back the next day and check on her as nothing was likely to change in the next few hours until she’d eaten and rested.

I went off down the track, having to stay in bare feet as I needed to find a stream to wash the gunge off my feet before I could put my trainers back on. Unfortunately, as the weather had been so dry, it was a mile or so before I could find a sufficiently deep pool to try to get cleaned up.

I stood in the pool and washed my arms and legs off but was amazed how much rubbing it took to have any effect. I then started on my feet and, despite that they’d been soaking for quite a while, it was just as difficult to remove that mud too.

Eventually, I deemed myself presentable – or at least no-one was going to run away in horror. I looked like a tramp though as my clothes were filthy. Luckily, by the end of the track there are several farms. I chose the nearest one, told them what had happened and said that I thought the sheep needed checking over. The old farmer assured me he’d send one of ‘his lads’ out later. I had my doubts…

The next day I set off for the couple of mile walk to the black lagoon… I could see no quad bike tracks had gone out that way and doubt the farmer’s lad would have walked. Luckily, she was no longer down by the lagoon. I went off up the hill looking for her and suddenly realised there was a sheep looking at me like she knew me – it was her and, although limping a bit still, she appeared to be none the worse for her ordeal 🙂

No photos of the sheep in order to protect her privacy – have a tree at Aughertree en-route to the common instead 😆