Little praise of the sheep

Who, man or sheep, domesticated the other? The question needs to be asked. Perhaps, without him, we would still be hunters on the lookout for the wild, fearing scarcity and bad weather. Like a caring parent, the sheep fed us, dressed us in its wool. For him, our pastoralism has reduced the extent of his wandering a little more each year, it has made us seasonal, transhumant, sedentary. It is impossible to travel through the history of humanity without seeing somewhere, in our memory and in the twists and turns of our emotional heritage, a ball of wool quietly knitted by the reassuring click of needles. Wherever you turn, the sheep is there, placid, busy grazing as if the rest of the world was hanging on to its chewing. No, the sheep is not foreign to us, it is part of the close, intimate family.
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Not all the clouds are in the sky. Some sheep roam freely in the fresh spring grass. These stratocumulus clover and apple trees are well planted, all four hooves in the nourishing earth. If they sometimes raise their heads, it is to ensure, with a glance, that the other white bures are not far away or that they have not found greener grass. As much as the clouds, sheep are familiar to us, although our urbanized lives make contact with their soft fleece difficult. They populate the nights of the insomniac who counts, the imagination of children, the memories of the elders. Like the bear or the wolf, the sheep inhabits our fables, he takes on the role of the gentle, the kind but also the gregarious in spite of himself, a little naive, always harmless.