Sheep are known to be docile, compliant and easily influenced. They seem to just mindlessly follow their herd without thinking but one sheep from new zealand who was named shrek dared to be different.

In 1998, a sheep farmer from new zealand got up early one morning and headed down to his shearing shed to give his flock their annual haircut and one by one the sheep would come in and the farmer would expertly shear off their wool coats and send them back out to the pasture but unbeknownst to this farmer… shrek decided he didn’t want a haircut and in fact he didn’t want a haircut ever again and so while his fellow sheep were marching down to get their wool cut shrek secretly walked to the back of the pen snuck out the back gate and ran away up over the hillside without anybody noticing and when he was finally out of sight of the farm he just kept on running until he found a cave high up on this mountain side that he could hide inside of.

At first the farmer didn’t even realize shrek was missing he had many sheep to take care of and so it was easy to lose track but eventually he did catch on and he went out looking for shrek but he couldn’t find him and so eventually he had to just accept that shrek was gone.

6 years later, in 2004, this farmer was out walking around the hillside a couple miles away from his farm when something moved in the corner of his eye and so he turned and looked uphill and there perched on a rock standing proudly was the most absurd looking sheep he had ever seen. It was shrek… and he looked like an enormous brown cotton ball… Wild sheep will shed their wool every year but domestic sheep like shrek just continue to grow wool every year until it’s sheared off but during shrek’s six years he spent living in this cave he never got a haircut and so his fleece just continued to grow and grow and grow and by the time it was finally sheared off it weighed 60 pounds his fleece contained enough wool to make suits for 20 large men shrek shot to fame immediately he was sheared live on new zealand’s national television and his fleece was auctioned off to help raise money for a children’s hospital.

Shrek met the prime minister of New Zealand and he became the subject of many children’s books and made dozens of charity appearances two and a half years after his first live television event shrek was sheared again on live tv this time off the coast of new zealand on an iceberg again to raise money for charity. shrek would spend the next couple of years touring the country before settling down back at his farm where he eventually died of old age in 2011. To this day he is still considered a national treasure.