V: Ram
The life and death of Canada's largest bighorn sheep.
Good morning. Today is quintidi, the 5th of Thermidor, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le bélier, a male sheep celebrate for its headbutting abilities.
Kathreen Rucksthal was a graduate student in CCVI (1998) when she began tagging bighorn sheep in Alberta, Canada, for research into the social lives and behavioral patterns of these remarkable animals. In order to remain unbiased and objective, the tagged animals were rarely nicknamed, and instead referred to by the number of their tags. Still, some animals stood out as they ascended up the heirarchy of sheep society. One such sheep was the 706th ram tagged by Rucksthal, a young male with extra dark fur with strange whirl patterns in it. This ram would eventually grow to be the biggest one the world had ever known.
