A Sheep Called Pepito

"Who pays for all of this? Us? The Taxpayer?"

And this was the sole redeeming quality that Noel Fisher possessed; his good intentions. "As I understand it, he forks out with his own money, and the proceeds raised go to children's hospitals in their war against cancer. However, I think he has given skydiving away. Didn't you read the article?"

"Bah! The guy's got a screw loose. I can't take to him."

"Well, the RSPCA had something to do with stopping any more attempts."

The RSPCA had in fact been initially invited to attend the supposed record breaking feat, but declined for professional and ethical reasons. It was alleged that Lionel had invited many prominent people to watch his sky fall, but most thought it was a hoax and didn't attend. However, the drop did take place, and the only evidence to prove it came courtesy of an amateur photographer who had captured the last fifteen hundred metres on camera. The unknown photographer had stopped on the side of the road that ran beside the landing strip and filmed the event in all of its digital glory. The last five hundred metres was the most interesting. Captured in high definition colour were Lionel and the sheep plummeting toward the ground, facing almost certain death due to a weight miscalculation. Making things worse, the wind had changed, throwing them way off their desired landing point on the runway, and heading towards nearby trees and parked motor vehicles. They were heading towards disaster until Lionel hit the emergency second backup chute which jutted the sheep from its harness and instead of it free falling onto the runway, it ploughed into a Mr Whippy van that had only just started selling ice creams to patrons. The sheep smashed through the van's roof, completely flattening the own who was in the middle of passing over a couple of double choc dips with extra nuts to some freckly faced kids with beanies. Fortunately neither the sheep nor the van owner were seriously injured in the accident, but it made for riveting viewing as the film found its way to the television news centres and eventually to the offices of the RSPCA. Lionel's landing wasn't filmed at all, and hardly anybody remembered what the drop had been for in the first place, which was a shame because he had paid a film crew five thousand dollars to capture the event for a planned television documentary that never reached fruition. In fact the film crew never showed, opting instead to return his money and film the finals for the Miss Rodeo of the year quest instead.

Still, the anonymous cameraman on the side of the road captured the sheep's moment of impact beautifully. Lionel was wrapped over the knuckles for it and banned from doing any more dangerous stunts with sheep for a period of twelve months, and for a while The Sheep Shearer's Gazette became the laughing stock of the publishing fraternity when it decided to run pictures of the incident, and treat the whole issue as serious.

Ray cringed as he remembered the abusive phone calls from cherished and passionate readers who said that kind of silliness wasn't the sort of thing they wanted to read in the Gazette. But for every abusive call there were ten more who wanted to read all about Lionel's other up and coming exploits. Issue 17 would go down as the most embarrassing effort to date.