Which, logically speaking, means it’s not the world’s oldest living sheep at all. Still, how old can a sheep get? The current record holder — a sheep so beloved by its owner that it was his screensaver (or possibly just his desktop image)– hasn’t just fallen off the twig. It’s fallen off a cliff.
The Mail reports on the sad fate of Twiggy (that’s the sheep, not the supermodel or the Australian business mogul, and not the model so tastefully pictured above), a near 26-year old sheep that died after falling off a cliff on Lewis in the Western Hebrides. Most sheep don’t reach above a dozen years, so Twiggy was fairly exceptional, something that her owner, John Maciver celebrated by making pictures of her into his screensaver — or as several of ewe have pointed out, most likely just his desktop wallpaper.
According to the Mail’s report, Maciver said that
“She is still on the screen to remind me of her. She passed away and I wouldn’t say peacefully. I found her at the bottom of a rock. It must have been quite a blow, sadly.”
There’s some dispute as to the record, however; the last recognised holder of the world’s oldest sheep title, Lucky, died in Australia in 2009, aged 23, but a Welsh sheep was noted (but presumably not recognised) as living for 28 years and 51 weeks. Maciver hadn’t applied for official dating recognition of Twiggy while still alive — a case of woolly thinking?