Big itch

Every once in awhile I find it relaxing to hang out with something that's bigger and furrier than myself and the big furry things I hung out with this week were bighorn sheep.

The sheep were perched high above the Sun Highway and I got the bright idea that I'd climb up there and see how they were doing.

The answer is they were quite itchy. Sheep put on a lot of hair to make it through Glacier National Park's winters and right about now they're all in the process of losing it, or, should I say, trying to get rid of it.

It itches. It scratches. It's hot.

So the rams (this is what they were, rams, about 17-18 of them, all looking like Phyllis Diller) lay down in front of me and scratched and itched and then would get up, shake-off, stretch out, find a tree and scratch and itch some more.

The one nice thing about having a set of horns is that you can scratch your back with them, and they did plenty of that.

I can feel for them.

Seems like the older I get the more I scratch and itch myself. My ears itch. My head itches. My other stuff itches more too, though that probably brings up some mental pictures you'd rather not eat your breakfast over … Let's just say there are plenty of days I'd love to have a set of horns myself.

(And for the folks at Fruit of the Loom, consider this an official complaint. The last set of boxers I bought have tags on the front and the back and often, especially if I'm not paying attention, I end up getting scratched by a button where buttons shouldn't be scratching, because I have the things on either backwards or inside out or both. But I digress…)

The cool thing about itchy scratchy ornery bighorn sheep is they make good pictures while they're being itchy and scratchy and ornery.

I mean, most photos of bighorn sheep make them look like they're these great big majestic animals, when, in reality, they are big and sometimes majestic, but 99 percent of the time, they're well, they're sheep.

It's fun to show them rubbing their itchy butts on a sub alpine fir or using their horns to scratch their big hairy backs.

Whenever I need my big old back scratched, I have to beg the wife, or pay my mouthy (but sweet) middle kid, Olivia, two dollars.

Somehow that doesn't seem fair.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.