Friday, April 16, 2021

Riders On The Storm

 Whoever coined the term "Dumb bunnies" didn't know these rabbits!

 Dateline: Dunedin, New Zealand: Three rabbits saw floodwaters rising fast, and they knew they had to take action, since they don't a) own surfboards  or  b) know how to swim.

So what they did, they jumped onto the backs of some sheep who were also seeking to avoid getting flooded out, and hitchhiked to dry land.

Ferg Horne, 64, is a farmer in New Zealand, been at it for almost 50 years, and he has never seen anything to match it.

His neighbor was off on vacation, so Ferg was caring for the sheep next door when wind and rain came ripping through the Taieri Plains on New Zealand’s South Island.

That was Friday afternoon, and Ferg was held at bay by the high water until Saturday morning, and when he got to where the sheep were standing in three inches of water, two of them had riders on their backs. 

Well, Ferg figured that the sheep were carrying some flood-borne debris or something, but, "the closer I got, I realized it was rabbits,” he said. Two on one sheep, one on the other.


But being 64, he's no technowizard, and when he went to snap a photo of the free-riders, he wound up shooting a video. But he wanted to show the world what was happening, because he didn't think people would believe him otherwise.

"It's a Samsung or a smartphone or whatever you call it. I swear at it every day," he told the news. "I'm absolutely useless with technology." In that cool New Zealand accent!

He did figure out how to forward the video to his son, and from there, it all went, well, viral, if it's ok to say that.

And, "From then on it's just gone crazy," he said.

And yes, he did take the sheep to the safety of higher ground after all this commotion. 

"They were as happy as can be, those rabbits; they were warm and dry, snuggled up," he told The Press newspaper in Christchurch, the South Island’s largest city.

And, just for the capper of it, Ferg says the rabbits "fell off by the time I got to where I was shifting the sheep to dry land, but I did look back, and they were climbing up [a] tree.”

Maybe they had had all their fun for the week.


2 comments:

Richard Foard said...

What animal do sheep look like when they're embarrassed?

Mark said...

I don't know; I was hoping ewe did.