A lamb attempting to follow the rest of a fleeing bighorn sheep herd didn’t quite get to the other side of a barbed-wire fence as gracefully as the others, taking a wild forward flip between the wires and tumbling to the ground before quickly righting itself and moving on.
The amusing incident occurred Monday just outside Kootenay Plains Ecological Reserve in Alberta, Canada, and Michael J. Kossin happened to capture it in video.
Kossin was returning from Abraham Lake with friends when they came upon the herd licking the salt off the road along AB-11 highway. They snapped several photos (seen below) before the herd began fleeing.
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When the bighorn sheep headed for the fence line, Kossin started taping.
“At first I was concerned for the lamb, and the audible gasp you hear in the video is from me,” Kossin told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors. “I thought he or she might have been hurt, or would get tangled in the wires, but was relieved to see it immediately be able to stand up and catch up to the rest of the herd.”
As for the shaky footage when the lamb flipped, Kossin told For The Win that “I was not bumped while recording the video, but I think I reflexively attempted to center the frame on the lamb as it tripped. The sheep were pretty far away and I had the lens zoomed-in to 200 mm so even slight movements are exaggerated.”
Even so, it’s impressive video footage of a big herd of fleeing bighorn sheep, despite one wild flip.
Photos courtesy of Michael J. Kossin.