There once was a farm that was situated right on top of a nice, large hill. There was an old farmer who lived there with his many livestock, and they did a wonderful job at keeping up with the farm.

The farmer’s name was Joel and his favorite animals to have on the farm were chickens. Joel had so many chickens, in fact, you could probably say he had too many for the size of his farm.

Other animals included a couple of sheep, goats, a donkey, and a herding dog. For the most part, Joel never saw any wild predators on the far. Every once in a while he would have to shoo off some hawks, but that was all.

The donkey was mostly to thank, he would drive off any predators by yelling and kicking. Joel loved his donkey and would often feed him delicious snacks.

The chickens had a large, elaborate coop on their end of the farm by the house. There were lights around the outside as well as doors that locked up very well.

Around the outside of the coop was a sturdy and tall fence. No animals could make the climb even if they really wanted to.

At the start of the day, farmer Joel would come outside and let all of the animals out of their coop or the barn. The chickens would leave the coop and wander into the pasture to graze with the larger animals.

At the end of the day, like clockwork, the dog would herd up all of the chickens and other animals back into their shelters for the night.

With their consistent schedule, there was hardly any time for a predator to grab any of Joel’s chickens; however, a new animal made itself present on the farm.

One day a homely-looking sheep appeared on the far end of the farm, where the hill started to taper down. There was delicious grass on this side of the farm and the chickens often spent their time there or down the hillside.

One morning after Joel had let the animals out, they decided to go introduce themselves to the new character. The animals all walked over to the odd sheep as they addressed and greeted him.

The sheep said his name was Judas and told them a story about how he fell off a truck somewhere in town. He wandered down one of the roads and found the farm.

Judas stood on only three of his four feet, telling the group that he had injured one of them when falling off the truck. “I wish not to move from this spot until my foot feels better.” That is what Judas relayed to the group. The animals, showing sympathy, brought some of their snacks for him later in the day.

The sheep each brought some of their finest hay while the chickens dropped grasshoppers and worms at the interloper's feet. The donkey had even brought Judas some dandelions.

When it was time, the dog came out to herd up the animals. Judas told him he would stay out in the field since he had hurt one of his feet. He assured the dog and donkey that he would be safe during the night.

The next morning, Joel came out and released all of the animals including the chickens. They start making their way down the hill in a line by where Judas the sheep was.

As the last hen was making her way down the hill, Judas lunged onto his “hurt” foot and snagged her out of the line. The action was so quick, the other chickens were none the wiser.

Days went on, which turned into weeks, and then a month had gone by. Slowly, every day, a chicken would go missing. One-by-one. By this point Judas had put on quite a bit of fluff and the other animals were becoming suspicious.

The dog noticed how many were missing one night as she was herding the chickens into their coop. She got Joel’s attention and brought him to the coop. When he counted, there were well over thirty chickens missing! The coop almost felt empty.

The next morning when Joel let the chickens and everyone out, he sent the donkey to follow up behind the chickens. "Surely that old sheep on the hill isn't killing the chickens," Joel murmured to himself as he made his way back into the house.

The chickens made their way down the hill, all passing by Judas, who was still spending his nights in the pasture instead of the barn with the other sheep and animals.

The donkey stood a little ways up the hill, so he didn’t alert Judas. As the last chicken was walking by, the donkey saw Judas leap towards the hen, onto the foot he claimed was “hurt.”

The noise that erupted from the donkey in that moment was definitely enough to get Joel’s attention. Judas stopped dead in his tracks looking up at the donkey as it came barreling down the slope at him.

Joel barreled out of the house with his gun. He slid down the slope just in time to see the donkey grabbing Judas by the back of the neck and tossing him down the hill.

Joel lined his gun and shot Judas twice. Then he made his way down the hill to see just what was going on here. As he got closer, he realized that what everyone thought was another sheep, was actually an extremely matted wolf!

Judas was feigning being a sheep just to get free meals from the farmer’s animals.

Now, Judas sits on the back porch of the farmhouse, stuffed so that he wards off any other tricky animals.

Bibliography:

W. H. D. Rouse, The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India, with illustrations by W. Robinson.

Author’s Note:

For some reason when I read the story about The Hypocritical Cat, it reminded me a little bit of Animal Farm. Just in the sense that the cat outsmarted the rats and was kind of running the whole show until the chief caught on. The wolf, or sheep, Judas is who I wrote to portray the cat named Holy. Judas was a wolf whose fur was so matted, he kind of looked like a sheep. Because of this, Judas decides to trick farmers into thinking he was another one of their livestock.

At the end of the story, Joel turned Judas into taxidermy so he can be a reminder to all, that Joel has the last laugh.