First we had the cloning of Dolly. And then Lolly, or Polly, or maybe Molly. Whatever it was, I would like the record to reflect that I personally ahave no conscious animosity toward or disrespect for the sheep community, nor can I explain their apparent popularity within the scientific realm. I will say, however, and I think I’m speaking for sheep everywhere, that it’s time people start backing off the incredibly ba-a-a-d jokes about them. 

And I promise that, as soon as I no longer find them funny, I will.

I recently read about the latest sheep fad involving behavior modification based on the reward system. The subject receives a reward every time it does something right and no attention at all when it does something wrong, thereby reinforcing the good behavior and discouraging the bad. The assumption is we all want attention and withholding it is enough to change our actions.

Not so in the all parts of the animal world, I’m sorry to report.  Apparently, simply ignoring, for instance, a fox’s ungracious behavior toward sheep doesn’t prevent him from dining on said sheep for lunch. If you ignore him, he comes back for dessert. 

Scientists have now therefore invented the antidote to the reward system, a long-overdue weapon in the Endangered Sheep arena called aversion therapy.

This “therapy” is a necklace worn by the sheep that emits an “eerie green glow” which frightens the fox when he gets too close.  After enough of this trauma, presumably, he will lose his craving for raw lamb flesh, thereby ensuring the poor thing can live long enough to be eaten by us.

Well, I think it’s a heck of an idea, and I’ve found a way to adapt it for use in our very own lives.  Of course, we’d have to lose the “eerie green glow” concept since that’s actually fashionable in some circles and wouldn’t stop anybody from doing anything except possibly getting a date.  For us, I think, we’d have to add an element of pain as the deterrent.

Not a lot of pain, mind ewe - er, you, because the goal is not to permanently harm people. We merely want to avert them from bad behavior, as the theory suggests.  So I was thinking maybe just a few hundreds volts contained in, say, a sassy charm necklace.  Stylish yet functional, that's my motto. 

It would have hundreds, nay, thousands of uses in everyday life, from the supermarket “Cart and Driver” winner who bashes you with her cart and expects an apology, to the  bullies at our kids’ schools who pick on everyone smarter than them and think those “Brain on Drugs” commercials are actually trying to sell eggs.

My necklace could also come in handy for people trying to right the wrongs of the world, those who have been trying for so long that they are often labeled as whiners because the people who need to change don’t understand that merely acknowledging the need for it doesn’t make it happen.

These people who are discriminated against or abused or denied equal and fair treatment or disrespected because of race or gender or religion can wear these necklaces, and every time someone doesn’t treat them properly, that someone will be seen a block away jumping nine feet in the air and yelling “Ouch!”  Then we’ll see who the whiners are, won’t we?

Well, anyway, until my device is marketed, we’ll have to rely on the ol’ noggin to fight our ba-a-attles for us, because otherwise we’d be defenseless against society, like a lamb to slaughter, which may be a misnomer in this case because if you remove the “s” from “slaughter,” it reads “like a lamb to laughter,” which really has been the case lately, although I must admit I’m feeling a bit sheepish about my alleged sheep chops – I mean “cheap shots” – against our wooly little … (zap).

Hey! That hurts!