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By ROBIN
PERRIE FLESH-eating killer sheep have been
found living on a remote moor. Until
now sheep were thought to eat only grass. But
bird expert Dr Niall Burton watched in horror as one bloodthirsty woolly
fiend pounced on a baby grouse and munched
it. Eerily, the attack came three miles from the spot
where a flock of sheep pushed a woman to her death off a
cliff. Dr
Burton described in the journal of British Birds how he came across a
family of eight grouse chicks foraging in the heather on Muggleswick
Common near Stanhope in Weardale, Co Suddenly one of three sheep nearby “ran forward,
picked up a chick and ate it whole.” He
went on: “The alarmed female grouse quickly removed her remaining
chicks. Dr
Burton believes the moorland sheep have turned to meat to compensate for
missing nutrients in their diet — possibly calcium. They satisfy their
lust for blood by scoffing chicks of ground nesting
birds. Flocks of killer sheep have also been reported in
other parts of
Farmer’s wife Betty Stobbs, 61, died in 1999 when
she was mobbed by hungry sheep as she went to feed
them. The
mother-of-one was riding an off-road quad
bike. She
plunged over the edge of Ashes Quarry in Stanhope and died at the
scene. A
witness said: “If you’ve got about 40 of the things rushing at you, it’s
such a force.” |
