It rattled her dags, but girl sheep's no stir fry
29 November 2001
It was a good yarn, but a sheep called Girl isn't having a baa of reports of her demise.
Christchurch woke on Wednesday to hear the woolly identity from Marshland, on the northern outskirts of the city, had died at the hands of a miscreant with a match, set alight as she grazed beside peaceful McSaveneys Rd.
Even as late as on Wednesday afternoon, local police were sure the van Hout family's sheep had died from her injuries, passing on their condolences.
"Right now we are just struggling to work out what the offender's motivation was," Constable Graham Honeybone, of the Papanui police said.
"If you can have the motivation for this sort of thing."
Whatever the motivation, police knew the "cowardly act" happened just after 4am, when two men in a car saw Girl tethered beside her owner's gate.
Mr Honeybone said one of the pair, an 18-year-old male, poured petrol over the defenceless animal and set it alight. The duo fled when they were startled by a neighbour.
"The first thing I heard was a car pull up," neighbour Rod Dohrman said.
"When I went to the end of my drive I saw what looked like a torch being shone in her face, but then whoosh, up she went."
As the men fled down the road, Mr Dohrman rushed to his garage for a bucket of water. Two men were later apprehended by police and charged with animal cruelty.
Nursing a singed but otherwise unhurt Girl on Wednesday, Theu Van Hout said he had always had sheep grazing on the grass outside his "hobby farm", and that none had been attacked before.
"People do some funny things, but it would take a lot more than a match to hurt our old girl. Whoever did this is a very strange man."
SPCA Canterbury centre manager Jenny Prattley said the offender was cowardly, gutless, and he deserved to feel the full weight of the law.
The maximum penalties for animal cruelty are six months in prison, a $25,000 fine, or both. Mrs Prattley said maiming an animal as docile as a sheep warranted the harshest possible response.
"I would like to think he can be made an example of, to stop others from doing the same thing, but then it will all come down to his excuse. But to me, there can't be an excuse."
Mrs Prattley said the SPCA seldom dealt with such vicious acts, but the potential was always there when it was such a short drive from the city into the country.
People should reconsider tethering animals close to the road, she said.
