Sheep On The Lam Find Themselves In Toms River Officers' Custody

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The suspects were barefoot and clad in white fleece. A keen-eyed resident saw the pair roaming in a North Dover neighborhood and, concerned about their intent, called the Toms River police department.

So Police Officers Eric Nelson, Walt Herman, and Ron Bayer headed to the scene to see what was up. They soon found the pair of woolly wanderers meandering along Vermont Avenue, and mostly minding their own business.

But because sheep have no business walking the roads of Ocean County, Nelson, Herman and Bayer set to work to capture them, with the help of Animal Control Officer Matthew Iovine, and soon were able to get them into the back of Nelson's patrol car, said Jillian Messina, media specialist for the Toms River Police Department.

The township's animal control then took them to the Toms River Animal Shelter for safe keeping until they were returned to their owner in the afternoon.

That's the long and short of the yarn, Messina said. Speaking of yarn, here's a few things you may not know about sheep, according to Modern Farmer and White House History:

• Sheep have rectangular pupils that give them nearly 360-degree vision, to help them avoid predators. (The estimate is 270 to 320 degrees; humans have about 155 degrees of vision, the site notes.)
• One pound of wool can make up to 10 miles of yarn. The average sheep can produce between 2 pounds and 30 pounds of wool per year.
• During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson used a flock of sheep to maintain the White House lawn to save on manpower; when the sheep were sheared, the wool was auctioned off and raised nearly $53,000 for the Red Cross. It is not known whether Wilson, who was New Jersey's governor from 1911 to 1913, ever used sheep to maintain the property at Shadow Lawn, at his summer residence in New Jersey, now better known as Wilson Hall at Monmouth University.

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