Once upon a time, somewhere in the mountains where you’ve never been, there lived two shepherds and their flocks of sheep. One shepherd had a flock of white sheep and the other had a flock of black sheep. Both shepherds claimed that their sheep’s wool was the softest.
Each shepherd had a field for his sheep right next to the other with a fence keeping the two flocks apart. Occasionally, a sheep would find a way through the fence and the shepherds would spot a black sheep in their middle of his white sheep or a white sheep in the middle of his black sheep. The shepherd would put his neighbour’s sheep back over the fence to keep them separated. That was the way it always was. Black sheep on one side; white sheep on the other.
But one day they found, in a gap in the fence, a little lamb. They’d never seen a lamb like it before; it was not black nor white. It was grey. The shepherds argued over whose lamb it was. They decided they must leave the gap in the fence and let the lamb go between fields as it pleased. It belonged to neither and both of them.
The little lamb grew up and it came time to sheer it. Neither shepherd wanted the wool, which they assumed would be inferior to their sheep’s wool. But when they came together to sheer the sheep that was neither and both of theirs, they found its wool was even softer than either of their sheep.
They fought over ownership of the soft wool until they looked over and saw the grey lamb with its black and white parents. And from that day on, the two shepherds were known for their flock of grey sheep with the softest wool in all the land.
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If this were a longer story, the shepherds would also fall in love 🖤🤍
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Photo source: nomadicmatt.com