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Australian sheep returns to owner two years after fleeing bushfire

Xinhua, February 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

An Australian sheep that was missing, presumed dead, has journeyed 20 kilometers to return to its owner almost two years to the day after fleeing a devastating bushfire.

The ewe, sporting an extra 20 kilograms of wool and all of its original identification tags, made her way back to the property owned by farmer Matthew Cleve at Wallan, north of Melbourne.

"I couldn't believe that she would turn up," Cleve told Fairfax Media on Monday. "She has been so resilient."

Cleve's property was ravaged by fire on Feb. 9 in 2014.

The Australian farmer lost machinery, his shearing shed and 30 kilometers worth of fencing to the blaze, as well as almost 400 sheep either killed, euthanized or lost after wandering off.

But approaching the second-year anniversary of that tumultuous day, Cleve had an unexpected visitor at the weekend.

Cleve said he believed the sheep, who has since been nicknamed "Barbie", fled to Deep Creek in Mickleham during the fires, a 20 kilometer walk from his farm.

Despite not having been drenched to protect against sheep-related diseases, Barbie was in good health with only a section of barbed wire hidden in her overgrown fleece along with irritating black soot -- evidence of her close call with the bushfire.

Dr John Webb-Ware, a leading consultant with the Mackinnon Project in the University of Melbourne's faculty of veterinary and agricultural science, told Fairfax Media on Monday that sheep had remarkably good memories.

"Perhaps the sheep saw Matthew over the fence and wanted to return," he said.

In 2006, a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) study showed sheep were capable of mapping a complex maze in just three days. When the same group of sheep were re-tested six weeks later, they remembered the maze and completed it in less time.

Webb-Ware said farmers were often able to track missing sheep as they "have a habit of looking where the grass is the best".

But in Barbie's case, he thought she had slowly made her way back home by pure chance, pushing through gaps in fencing made by kangaroos. Endit