Old Flossie

The Essex village of Arrowfield had previously been known as little more than a relic. With the bizarre growth spurts of Old Flossie, a ram owned by a local farmer, however, it had hit headlines. 'Not great headlines, mind' said the pub landlord, 'you won't see us on the front page of The Times.' You would, however, see them on websites dedicated to freaks of nature, before Old Flossie finally grew so large that paranormal societies became interested, and finally legitimate religion. Science too was curious, as science is known to be, and the inevitable arguments emerged between faith and reason.

Old Flossie, so named because his fur resembled a burnt wodge of candy floss, simply ate his herbs and seeds while all around him people mithered. A league of Satanists showed up to claim him as their symbol and were promptly chased away. The farmer, an old Church of England man, had caught them committing bisexual acts before the animal. 'Old Flossie didn't seem to mind' said their leader, who grinned and wore red lenses.

Indeed, Old Flossie didn't seem to have any opinion either of the world around him or his phenomenal growth, reaching half the size of a cowshed and then outgrowing it after six months. Children were, of course, advised to keep away as parents fretted over the thought of their little sods trampled into sod, but the real danger emerged as the ram began to interfere with overhead flight. A pilot performing with the Red Arrows got lost and careened into one of the ram's horns, as wide as a mountain. 'His body's still tangled in all that fur, likely enough' opined an Arrowfield pub regular.

The men and women of parliament took time from their usual intrigues to discuss the problem of Old Flossie. Opinions in the nation were divided. Some said that we should kill and feed him to the poor. Others said that animals have rights too and, after all, you wouldn't treat a person that way, would you? The usual crowd were convinced that Middle Eastern refugees were somehow involved. It was at last decided that Old Flossie had munched his last when a cult rose up around him, shaving their heads and conducting rites by torchlight around the sleeping ram. The cult, largely comprised of young runaways and the mentally distressed, ended in a group suicide. The bodies were discovered by the farmer in his barn. They'd stood in a circle and passed around a goblet of poisoned wine, garnished with a lock of the ram's fur. 'I thought them bloody devil-worshippers'd come back at first' said the farmer, 'til I gave one lad a good kick and he didn't stop staring.'

Parliament declared that a humane execution of the animal was in order, but then was advised that a syringe the size of one of the animal's hooves could hardly carry enough venom to give Old Flossie pause, let alone fell him. And when he did fall, where would he land? Hundreds, even thousands, might perish. In the end, it was decided that one of the farmer's fields would be dug up and re-lain with tainted sod. The ram ate of the sod and was duly felled, the village and surrounding settlements having been evacuated. 'MILLIONAIRES BID ON OLD FLOSSIE'S PHALLUS' one of the tabloids cried after the fact, the article suggesting an Illuminati-esque auction.

As it happened, Old Flossie's carcase was left rotting in Jerusalem's green fields. The stench was such that it reached settlements within a certain radius and was blamed for a rise in violent crime. 'Driven mad by Old Flossie's death fumes, he was' said more than one villager on hearing that a man had beaten his wife to death, or done terrible things to girls and boys. Old Flossie, meanwhile, born as a fluffy little ram lam in a corrugated cowshed, and who died as a buck whose back brushed the ceiling of Earth itself, was as indifferent in death as he had been in life.