There once was a beautiful meadow. Flowers of different colours and scents grew there. The grass was the greenest in the world. Every leaf and every plant that grew there looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Every day a flock of sheep came to this meadow with their shepherd. They enjoyed the good grass, rest and bask in the sunshine. There were exactly one hundred sheep in the flock. The shepherd who walked with them always counted them. Before they went out and before they came back home. He knew them all. Everybody thought they looked the same, but the shepherd knew which one is which. He loved them and took care of them as well as he could.
One day when he was coming back from the meadow with his sheep, he started counting them outside the barn and ended up with the number 99. One sheep was missing. He walked carefully around all of them, looking at them and wondering which one was missing. “Oh, right. The smallest and most curious. The little black one with the white legs.” He said to himself.
He looked up at the sky and it looked like it was going to be dark soon. He had to hurry. He had to find her before it got dark. He locked out all the other sheep to keep them safe and set out on a journey. He kept looking around, but he couldn’t find the sheep anywhere. He couldn’t even hear her calling him. He was getting worried about her, but he was too tired, so he sat down under a rock, put his head in his hands, and thought hard about where else he could look, when all of a sudden he heard. “Baaa, baa, baa.” He walked around the rock and on the other side of it stood his stray sheep. The poor thing was tangled in the bushes and couldn’t get out. She was so tired, hungry and exhausted that she didn’t even have the strength to walk. The shepherd freed her from the bush, carefully put her on his back and carried her all the way home.
When the sheep saw them, they were all very happy that the shepherd had found the lost one. When he put her in the stable, he was so tired that he lay down beside her and fell asleep. He slept among his sheep until morning. When he awoke, he was astonished. He had some nice fluffy hay around him to make him sleep well, and he was covered with the wool from the sheep he had shorn for the last time.
He sat up. He looked at his sheep and asked, “Did you do that? Did you take such good care of me last night?” “Baa, baa.” All the sheep answered in agreement. They appreciated the shepherd’s loving care of them. And he already knew it too.
To this day, he still leads them to the juiciest meadow there is. Because he knows that as he takes care of them, they will take care of him.
