The manager of a big Australian sheep-ranch engaged a discharged sailor to do farm work. He was put in charge of a large flock of sheep.
Now, all you've got to do, explained the manager, "is to keep them on the run."
A run is a large stretch of bushland enclosed by a fence, and sheep have many ingenious methods of escaping from their own to neighboring runs and so getting mixed up with other flocks.
At the end of a couple of hours the manager rode up again�the air was thick with dust as though a thousand head of cattle had passed by.
At last he distinguished the form of his new shepherd�a collapsed heap prone upon the ground. Surrounding him were the sheep, a pitiful, huddled mass, bleating plaintively, with considerably more than a week's condition lost.
What the dickens have you been doing to those sheep? shrieked the almost frantic manager.
The ex-sailor managed to gasp out: "Well, sir, I've done my best. You told me to keep them on the run, and so I hunted them up and down and round�and now�I'm just dead beat myself."