Nursery Rhymes Contemporized (No. 2)
Little Bo-Peep Has Lost Her Sheep
Tending sheep is a tough business, Ms. Bo-Peep soon discovered.
Not only has climate chaos made it hard to graze sheep, but the once grassy plains have been sold off to oil fracking operations that have sucked out all the ground water and left the topsoil toxic and barren. Additionally, the ultimate control of the sheep business rests with the tightly knit cartels of wool-buyers, clothing manufacturers and retailers. Being thus squeezed by manufacturers and retailers and various middlemen, independent shepherds like Little Bo-Peep were getting fleeced.
The manufacturers' and retailers' shareholders demanded ever more profit. That was achieved, in part, by raising prices for consumers, in part by reducing wages and, in part, by cutting costs at the production end. Thus, in order to lay off their wool dyers and save on labor, the manufacturers demanded that shepherds like Bo-Peep start raising pre-dyed sheep. Now to do this, they told Bo-Peep, she needed to genetically alter her flocks using gene splicing techniques.
At first, Little Bo-Peep wanted nothing to do with genetically modified sheep who would grow different colors of wool. But soon, all the other shepherds were doing it and Bo-Peep would quickly go out of business if she didn't, too. So she caved in. Bo-Peep started raising genetically modified sheep and sorted them into various sub-flocks that were green, blue, pink, florescent green, red, polka-dot, zebra-striped and tutti-fruity.
But the C-Suite corporate officers and the shareholders were insistent that their business had to become more profitable. Besides, they pointed out, the wool clothing industry was becoming significantly less remunerative as more and more fashion-conscious people were persuaded to wear sweaters, pants and shirts sewn from translucent fish scales and sequined fig leaves, just like their favorite movie stars and social media influencers were wearing.
Therefore, the manufacturers now demanded longer strands of wool in order to cut spinning costs. Another special gene would have to be inserted into the sheep's genome, they told Ms. Bo-Peep, such that they would grow single-hair coats of wool that could be unwound from the sheep onto a spool in one mechanized unwinding operation (turning the sheep on a spindle that looked like a big gyro rotisserie), rather than shearing them manually in the spring. Again, Little Bo-Peep complied because, well, once you start down this path, there is no turning back.
All of these genetic modification procedures were very expensive, of course, as were the veterinary costs of treating the GM sheep's strange medical disorders that resulted from messing with their genes.
Carpe diem! advised Bo-Peep's financial advisor. He persuaded Bo-Peep (who he regarded as just a mutton-head ready to be sheared) to throw financial caution to the wind, get a second and third mortgage on her flock, buy lots of speculative stock on margin on Wall Street, and take out a revolving line of credit at even higher rates of interest. But, very soon, Little Bo-Peep's debt service exceeded her revenue and she had to open a Substack page ("Herd on the Street/Pulling the Wool Over My Eyes - Deep in Sheep Dip Dis.Substack.com") in order to try to monetize her misfortune and make some extra money. Unfortunately, no one was interested in paying to subscribe to read about the shear insanity of Little Bo-Peep's woolly travails because she wasn't a journalistic super-star. Thus, her sheep herding business continued to unravel.
At this point, the genetic engineering also took an unexpected turn when, as a result of the side-effects of rather crude gene splicing techniques, the sheep's supposed "junk genes" kicked into effect. Bo-Peep's sheep started to grow canine teeth, prehensile tails, gills, parrot feathers and long crocodile jaws. Also, many of them stopped grazing grass altogether and became obligate carnivores. When wolves or coyotes approached the flock, these carnivorous sheep didn't run, but stood their ground. They then attacked and devoured the wolves and coyotes.
Bo-Peep’s sheep grew canine teeth, prehensile tails, gills, feathers and crocodile jaws.
"What an unexpected bonus!" the manufacturers told Bo-Peep. "Now you can get rid of your sheep dogs and pass the dog food cost savings on to us!"
Unfortunately, the carnivorous sheep not only ate the wolves and coyotes, but they also ate the sheep dogs as well as rabbits, deer, cattle, bears, bobcats, other sheep, and several little kids... and they were starting to look downright Pavlovian as they stared, salivating, at Bo-Peep.
The coup de grace to this woolly affair occurred when Little Bo-Peep's banks wouldn't extend any more credit to her. She defaulted on her loans. The banks foreclosed on her flock, her "Little Bo-Peep" logo and URL, her signature blue bonnet and her sturdy wood shepherd's crook, selling them all at a sheriff's auction for pennies on the dollar. Then she filed for bankruptcy.
And that is how Little Bo-Peep lost her sheep. She now works as a part-time Amazon delivery truck driver.
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