Sheep, for the most part, are an abstraction to me. I see them in photos and videos from time to time, but as a city dweller, my up-close encounters with them have been limited. (Thanks to some thoughts shared by a friend today, the notion of a Sheep Gate has now taken on an intriguing new depth — see his comments, added to my original blog post, below.)

“Sheep” became a bit less abstract for me last summer though, on a vacation trip to Scotland and Ireland. When you get away from the cities in either country, you find sheep practically everywhere.

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