It’s not every day that a runner inadvertently becomes the shepherd of a flock of sheep. A video has been released showing over 100 sheep watching a randomly chosen runner as their new leader. Sheep lost in a corner of France seem to accuse free riders of betraying them. Eleanor Scholz, a California tourist visiting France with her boyfriend, took a short walk in the countryside. Suddenly she heard sheep “bleating” and saw a large number of sheep approaching.
The sight of hundreds of sheep coming towards me was intriguing.” It took me a while to realize what I was seeing,” says Eleanor. “I first thought he was a shepherd, but he was dressed like no shepherd I had ever seen before, and the shepherds seemed to run erratically.”
Eleanor was worried about this woman. She left the road, stopped behind a tree and approached the runner. The runner stopped to talk to him.
“When she stopped, all the sheep stopped and waited for her. “That’s when I knew something very strange was happening,” Eleanor recalls.
The runners, wanting to know if the sheep were lost and desperately needed a leader, set off after her and she inadvertently became their new leader. “While they were talking, some sheep got curious and approached Eleanor,” she says. “I was afraid that one of them would call me and start chasing me. But they stood there and watched patiently as she spoke to me. They didn’t seem stressed or particularly tired, which was the most interesting thing.”
The runner has found a way for the sheep to return home. He remembered there was a pasture and ran down the road, hoping the real owner would call the sheep off the road. Once again the herd eagerly followed their new leader. The racer thought it wouldn’t be difficult to find the owner by the tag of each sheep. But he didn’t seem upset and was determined to find a home.
“I felt like he was hungry for his new role as a shepherd and found them a solution and a safe place,” Scholtz says. When the time came to run, the sheep followed him as before.
“Some of the sheep who were thinking of making me their new shepherd changed their minds when they saw their mate leaving. I thought the lost sheep had finally found a home.” Eleanor says: “I wish I knew the full story, but I only had a fleeting encounter with a sheep in the wild and I’m glad I witnessed it.
Eleanor posted this exciting encounter on her Instagram account, which achieved fantastic results – 31.2 million views and 1.2 million likes. People went crazy about it. A user wrote: He seems to know where he is going. We follow him.
