A shear thrill

Coral Wilson

With a large rope wrapped around his neck, Vanilla the sheep was

pulled from the front and pushed from behind -- but he refused to

budge.

“He likes it,” Hailey Hoyt, 5, assured her friend. “He wants to

have his wool taken off, he will feel much better.”

The children repeated the words of their teachers just moments

before.

“There might be a little blood, but we won’t be concerned,”

teacher Ellen Kramer had told hundreds of students who had formed a

large circle on Golden View Elementary School’s two-acre farm. “The

sheep likes this.”

But it didn’t look like fun for Vanilla. And the children didn’t

look convinced.

It took four people urging the stubborn sheep forward until

Vanilla was in the middle of the circle, straddled securely between

sheep shearer Don Paulson’s legs.

The thin, 85-year-old man immediately took charge, grabbing a hold

of Vanilla’s head and twisted it upwards. He threw the sheep on it’s

back, legs flailing.

The children’s eyes popped open, wider than Vanilla’s if possible.

Then Paulson leaned in for the attack, the sound of screams marking

every stroke of his shears.

Girls covered their faces with both hands and peeked through their

fingers. Others furled their eyebrows in concern. When Paulson

reached Vanilla’s head, the children rubbed their own foreheads,

screaming out in pain.

“Everyone thinks it’s so gross. I think it’s cool,” Alissa Mowrey,

9, said, nudging her friend.

Vanilla looked like a different creature without his wool, almost

naked. Some of the boys became concerned that he was cold.

“That’s how they make cotton -- I think,” Brandon Wolfe, 9, told

his friends.

Paulson flipped Vanilla over and dragged him on the dirt by his

forelegs. Then just when sheep and children all thought it was over,

Paulson grabbed a large, sharp, scary pair of pliers and chopped

large chunks from Vanilla’s hooves.

“Now he is going to get a little pedicure,” teacher Julie Neubert

reassured her class.

Picking up the layer of wool on the dirt, Paulson explained that

microscopic barbs on every fiber holds the wool together like a

second skin.

“My record is 128 sheep in an eight-hour day,” he said. “But that

was 26 years ago, I get slower every day.”

That day he only sheared the school’s two sheep, Vanilla and his

mother, Barbie. Demonstrating more than 60 years of sheep shearing

experience, Paulson had Vanilla positioned tamely at his feet. Then

he casually stepped aside and set the animal free.

Once he was back on his feet, Vanilla was immediately confronted

on all sides by a barricade of children. Parting the sea of amazed

faces, Vanilla escaped with all he had left -- a thin layer of wool

on his back and maybe a shred of dignity.

* CORAL WILSON is a news assistant who covers education. She can

be reached at (714) 965-7177 or by e-mail at

coral.wilson@latimes.com.