RIP Shrek the Sheep (1994-2011)

January 7, 2012 2:15 PM

Shrek the sheep taught us all that if you really, really don't want to do something, you don't have to.

RIP Shrek the Sheep (1994-2011)

(Disclaimer: The Deadspin article makes its own unfunny sheep sex joke so we don't have to, and I apologize on its behalf.)

posted by juliplease (43 comments total)

Isn't Deadspin a sports blog?
posted by desjardins at 2:20 PM on January 7

Sheep shearing is actually a competitive sport.
posted by latkes at 2:21 PM on January 7

(Disclaimer: The Deadspin article makes its own unfunny sheep sex joke so we don't have to, and I apologize on its behalf.)

Oh, you mean this one?

Being the most famous sheep in New Zealand is like being a supermodel in America...

I quite liked it.
posted by Kerasia at 2:22 PM on January 7

some of comments are Damn funny. rip you fluffy rebellious sheep.
posted by davidmsc at 2:26 PM on January 7

Shrek was put down this year

I suspect he really, really didn't want to do this, and yet...

Perhaps the real moral is "if you are a rebel, they will capture you, parade you through the country, make you conform, use you for a few more years, and, once attention has died down, it's a bullet in the back of the head behind the chemical shed."
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:27 PM on January 7 [38 favorites]

Billions of generations have come and gone, and most are meaningless for the purposes of the living if we can't take some sort of lesson from their brief time on earth.

Either this author has a seriously shaky grasp of evolutionary history, or he's talking about something other than humans here.
posted by Dasein at 2:36 PM on January 7 [2 favorites]

May he rest in fleece.
posted by argonauta at 2:45 PM on January 7 [19 favorites]

Oh, sure, can't wait to read the pages and pages eulogizing this useless piece of shit. I'm sure people are going to come in and offer a few lame equivocations about 'uh, um, well, you should ignore the bad stuff, but he really wasn't that ba-" no. Fuck that. Fuck Shrek. He was a bastard. A role model to flaccid intellectualism across the planet, proving that you need neither wit nor scruples to succeed in this fuckshit world. Shrek is the reason that we're in so many of the pickles that we're currently in, and I will be GOD damned if I'm going to let him be celebrated as a hero after his death. I'm happy he's dead, and I refuse to be sheepish about it.
posted by codacorolla at 3:03 PM on January 7 [7 favorites]

.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:12 PM on January 7

Wool ewe stop with the sheep jokes!
posted by orange swan at 3:13 PM on January 7 [2 favorites]

There are 10 sheep for every New Zealander,¹ they shouldn't need to shear them.
posted by bright ideas for a cheery christmas at 3:22 PM on January 7

Ode to Shrek

Maybe we didn't shear you
Quite as often as we could have.
Maybe you didn't breed ewes
Quite as often as you should have

If your fleece was overlarge
And left you in a bind
You were always in the barn
You were always in the barn

Tell me
Tell me that your sheep love hasn't died
And give us
Give us one more chance to get your wool sheared and dyed
Sheared and dyed

Little things we should have spun and wove
We just never took the time
You were always in the barn
You were always in the barn
posted by orange swan at 3:23 PM on January 7 [6 favorites]

Before: O

After: .
posted by brundlefly at 3:25 PM on January 7 [5 favorites]

Shrek the sheep! Boy could that sheep turn a circle in to a period!
posted by TheRedArmy at 3:27 PM on January 7

Being the most famous sheep in New Zealand is like being a supermodel in America: half the country wants to fuck you.

after reading that I heard a clap in my head like barry petchesky was right here in the room with me, high-fiving himself
posted by One Thousand and One at 3:28 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

.
posted by halonine at 3:30 PM on January 7

*
posted by localroger at 3:31 PM on January 7 [10 favorites]

I don't get it.

The picture immediately following this sentence, "If Shrek didn't want his wool shorn, then goddamnit, nobody was going to shear Shrek's wool," is a picture of Shrek after having been shorn.

"Shrek the sheep taught us all that if you really, really don't want to do something, you don't have to."

No, Shrek taught us that if you really don't want to do something, people will hunt you down and force you to do it anyway.

An I missing something?
posted by HMSSM at 3:31 PM on January 7 [6 favorites]

why are you all so cynical??
posted by Partario at 3:35 PM on January 7

His first shearing yielded 60 pounds of fleece? Wow.
posted by zarq at 3:48 PM on January 7

Maybe shrek wasn't so much a rebel as a dope whose sense of direction was so bad it took him six years to find his way out of a cave
posted by ook at 3:57 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

Also: is that much fleece specific to domesticated sheep? It doesn't seem like growing 60 pounds of something sans human trimming would be very conducive to survival.
posted by codacorolla at 3:57 PM on January 7

If you don't want to do something, you don't have to do it.

The triumph of the wool.
posted by Devonian at 4:05 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]

why are you all so cynical??

Just a bunch of haters, I'm afraid. Flock us and move on.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:26 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

I don't get it. Why would anyone want to fuck a boy sheep? That's just wrong.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:29 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

Shrek the sheep taught us all that if you really, really don't want to do something, you don't have to.

Instead, they will pin you down and make you do it on national television. The indignity!
posted by schroedinger at 5:56 PM on January 7

If you're a sheep, no matter what you do it's all mutton in the end.
posted by orange swan at 6:30 PM on January 7

Also: is that much fleece specific to domesticated sheep? It doesn't seem like growing 60 pounds of something sans human trimming would be very conducive to survival.

You're absolutely right -- because the only sheep out there are domesticated sheep. They've stopped naturally shedding, and have to be shorn, now. (By 'now' I mean in the last couple thousand years or something like that.)
posted by kalimac at 6:31 PM on January 7

This news item is an apt companion to Pixar's dreadful Boundin', [video, prefaced by advertisement] which instructs us to get fleeced, and love it. Get your head in the right place!
posted by 0rison at 6:34 PM on January 7

You're absolutely right -- because the only sheep out there are domesticated sheep. They've stopped naturally shedding, and have to be shorn, now. (By 'now' I mean in the last couple thousand years or something like that.)

What? This is a weird thing to be obtuse and aggressive about. That's why I specified domesticated sheep, which are a different thing than wild sheep. I would assume that domesticated sheep were bred for growing a shitload of hair, evidenced by the animal in the OP having sixty fucking pounds of it when he wasn't getting haircuts on the regular. But I'm not really sure. Hence why I asked a question, and didn't make a statement of fact as you seem to have strangely assumed.
posted by codacorolla at 6:49 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

I am happy that this is a post on MetaFilter.
posted by Gator at 7:02 PM on January 7

Also: is that much fleece specific to domesticated sheep? It doesn't seem like growing 60 pounds of something sans human trimming would be very conducive to survival.

Yup, we've bred an animal for high quality and quantity of wool production, to be sheared every year, at minimum, just like we've bred cattle with double muscling that can't travel to natural grass and water, dogs that need regular vet care to be able to breath and walk, and horses that need teeth floating because their jaws are too small for their 'pretty' little heads.

Shearing is one of the least of different species problems, although sheep do get nasty skin infections if their coats are not taken care of.

(and I'll bet when it rained, that stuff Shrek carried STUNK!)
posted by BlueHorse at 8:01 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

When reached for comment, Shrek's herd said "Meh."

Also:
Shortly after his capture Shrek was sheared on live TV, and two and a half years later shorn again on an iceberg floating off the coast of Dunedin

Um, what? Do they do a lot of sheep-shearing on floating icebergs?
posted by bleep at 9:35 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]

He was helicoptered out to the iceberg as a publicity stunt for Icebreaker. He was a merino sheep; they make clothes from merino wool. It made sense at the time.
posted by John Shaft at 10:26 PM on January 7

See the merino standing there with his long, shaggy hair
See thumber Enos standing there with his long shaggy hair
See the merino, Stan Ding, there, with his long shaggy hair
See the merino standing! Therewith, his long shaggy hair
See the merino standing there with his long shaggy hayer
See the merino standing there with his long, shaggy Eire
etc.
posted by 0rison at 11:51 PM on January 7

And the sign said long-haired freaky sheeple...need not apply
posted by Sparx at 1:05 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Historically the wool was what you kept sheep for, with the meat a welcome by-product: but I believe (? in the UK anyway) it's now more commonly about meat with the wool a minor factor, or even a profitless irritation. New (or rather old) breeds that don't need shearing are looking interesting again.
posted by Segundus at 1:15 AM on January 8

(Disclaimer: The Deadspin article makes its own unfunny sheep sex joke so we don't have to, and I apologize on its behalf.)

I thought the joke was that half the inhabitants of new Zealand are other sheep.
posted by The Wig at 4:27 AM on January 8

What? This is a weird thing to be obtuse and aggressive about. That's why I specified domesticated sheep, which are a different thing than wild sheep. I would assume that domesticated sheep were bred for growing a shitload of hair, evidenced by the animal in the OP having sixty fucking pounds of it when he wasn't getting haircuts on the regular. But I'm not really sure. Hence why I asked a question, and didn't make a statement of fact as you seem to have strangely assumed.

Ergh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way at all, I promise; I'd had a ridiculously long, hard day and wasn't feeling particularly prolix, and it all came out short and badly-written, with overtones I truly didn't mean to convey. I think what I was trying to say is what I hope is an answer to your question: that there aren't any wild sheep anymore, and the domesticated ones are bred specifically to keep growing their hair, and thus require regular haircuts. Basically, sheep no longer shed, and they need humans to keep 'em from winding up with sixty lbs of hair.

Also, I promise to not post on metafilter when I'm half asleep anymore.
posted by kalimac at 6:23 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Baa-rtleby
posted by emelenjr at 8:59 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

"He was helicoptered out to the iceberg as a publicity stunt for Icebreaker. He was a merino sheep; they make clothes from merino wool. It made sense at the time.
posted by John Shaft"

The only parts of this I understand are "helicoptered out" "publicity stunt" and "it made sense at the time".
posted by bleep at 9:54 AM on January 8

kalimac is right, fundamentally there's no such thing as a non-domesticated sheep. Sheep as we know them were bred from wild animals like the mouflon. There are other ovids like Dall sheep and Bighorn sheep but SHEEP sheep are an entirely human creation. In much the same way that there are other canids, but dogs are a human creation. (Dogs and sheep are the two earliest domesticated animals.)

As for shearing, there are still a few extremely primitive heritage breeds. These shed their coats twice a year, and have to be plucked. But over the last few thousand years, we have bred out the ability to shed, while at the same time bumping up the amount of fleece each animal can produce.

The merino in particular has been bred to produce truly staggering amounts of high-quality fleece. In exchange for which, we have to shear it once a year or so, lest the animal begin to suffer.

In order to produce all that fleece, they have loose skin that falls in folds like a shar pei dog. If left untended, the fleece mats up and can cause the skin folds to chafe and pull. Not to mention having all that weight pulling down on your skin. I can't imagine how uncomfortable Shrek was, after the first year or two. The silly stubborn creature.

A merino sheep is just as human-created and rarified as a chihuahua or a persian cat. Surviving on its own without human intervention really was an impressive accomplishment.
posted by ErikaB at 12:07 PM on January 8

Of course, there is a theory that this happened a long time ago. [Warning. Satire. Contains Jeremy Wells and actual death.]
posted by Sonny Jim at 2:01 PM on January 8