If all the world's a stage, my sheep are busy actors on it - they certainly have their exits and their entrances, even if they mainly play in crowd scenes.
It's been terrible this year.
"Hi, It's your neighbour here. We've got one of your brown sheep".
I got that call in the depth of winter.
I suggested they chase the stray down their drive, and it would turn right and come home. It did, and I shut it back in the paddock with the rest of the flock.
In the morning the sheep was back next door. I chased it home and shut it in a different paddock, where the pet lambs lived.
It stayed put for two days, before it figured out how to escape and went next door again. I got it back and fixed a dodgy bit of boundary fence.
It escaped again, and when I chased it home it leapt the wooden fence into the yards like an Olympic hurdler.
So that's how it was getting out. I made the fence higher.
Next a white hogget took to escaping. It also went next door, but seemed to come back home whenever it wanted to.
I pretended it wasn't mine and secretly hoped it would run away, but when it took to visiting suburban gardens, I had to take action. Since I didn't know where it was getting out, I couldn't fix it.
Eventually I moved the whole flock up to the top of the hill until I could work out what was going on. But they had to come back down again for shearing.
As we drove them into the yards, one ewe hung a sharp right and barged as fast as she could into a small gate by the shed.
She blasted it open with her head, and took off into the bush, closely followed by another six. The shearer was on his way, so we had no time to find them.
We shut in the ones we had and got them shorn. The others have to wait.
But now I have a new set of escapees - a black ewe with a white lamb. Every day I would find them out when I got home, and I had to watch them closely to see how they managed it.
They had figured out how to squeeze through the gate by the letterbox, trot down the concrete steps and head back up the drive to the long grass next door, again and again.
I've made temporary repairs to the gate, and for now they are secure again.
But at the end of the summer, they and their hurdling cousins are going to the sales.