Little Lamb: How a sheep saved author Anne Hansen

This article comes from the stern archive and was first published in April 2024.

There are almost as many sheep as people living in North Friesland. There are 94,308 sheep for around 166,000 inhabitants. Sheep are omnipresent there. Anne Hansen still had no connection to them, even though she grew up in Husum. Until an illness forced her to move her life from Berlin back to North Friesland. The author wanted to stay in her old home with her husband for a year until she was fit again. But then a sheep called Lämmchen came into her life. The animal encounter changed Anne Hansen’s life significantly. Today she is well again – and after more than 20 years in Berlin she has finally turned her back to start a new life in Husum with a bird identification book and a collection of rubber boots. Here she tells her story:

“I woke up one day and immediately noticed that something was wrong. My head felt like I had been in a fight during the night. I was so upset that I went straight to the doctor. I was taken to the hospital and the doctor there gave me a lumbar puncture. This is basically a way of removing cerebrospinal fluid from the spinal cord. He thought I might have meningitis. Unfortunately, the puncture went completely wrong and made my symptoms even worse.

I really couldn’t do anything anymore – I could only lie down. Every attempt to get up resulted in an unbearable headache. I had a low cerebrospinal fluid pressure, something like a negative pressure in the brain. Yes, and so I really did spend a couple of weeks lying horizontal. Suddenly my world had become very small. I was lying in my apartment on a four-lane road in the middle of Berlin in Prenzlauer Berg. Up until then, my husband and I were typical city dwellers. We loved going out to eat, being in the middle of things and taking advantage of everything Berlin had to offer. But from one moment to the next, I no longer enjoyed this city. Everything that had previously been so much fun for me disappeared. I was even suddenly bothered by the noise.

So I thought that I might as well be in Husum. Here at home by the sea, I wanted to completely clear my body and mind. So we packed our bags in Berlin, sublet our apartment and headed off to North Friesland. A contrast: instead of the sound of engines, there was only wind and silence.

To help me get back on my feet, my husband forced me to go for a walk every day – no matter what the weather. On one of these walks, we sat down on the grass by the dyke because I needed a break. Suddenly one of the lambs from the flock of sheep came towards us and we were completely taken aback. Because sheep are not normally pets. Here in Husum, you can regularly see tourists desperately trying to take a selfie with the sheep, but they run away. So we froze so as not to scare the lamb. But it was completely fearless and sniffed us from head to toe. It got even stranger – the lamb even let us pet it. From that moment on, all I wanted was to see the lamb again. Meeting the flock of sheep and our little lamb was my motivation to get up from the sofa every day.

From city dweller to sheep connoisseur

In no time at all I became an absolute sheep expert and got to know the whole herd. What really impressed me is that the sheep have an incredible intrinsic motivation to spend time with you. My husband and I never took food with us and never gave our lamb anything to eat either – they really wanted to spend time with us. And I was surprised at how different their characters were. There was ‘Party Boy’, who hung out on the dyke until the afternoon, apparently hungover, then went wild and had nothing but nonsense on his mind. The affectionate ‘Heidi Klum’ – the prettiest lamb in the whole herd – or the devious ‘Saul Junior’, who was part of a gang of lambs and constantly encouraged even the good ones to eat something.

Not only did the lambs provide a lot of entertainment (better than any movie!), but they actually gave me a different perspective on life. A small awakening for me was that sheep really live in the moment. When I was with the lamb, he was really happy. It was the greatest thing for him. And when we left, of course I would have liked him to run after us, mourn us or stick his head through the gate. But he just carried on and ate grass. It may sound banal at first, but I thought: Man, it’s just as right to really live in the moment and not to think about what was or what might come.

Sheep give Anne Hansen a new perspective on her illness

That also gave me a new perspective on my illness. Before that, I struggled with it for a long time, thinking, man, if you had gone to a different hospital, maybe you would have survived this examination better. Or if a different doctor had been on duty. So I spent a really long time thinking about it until I realized that it is what it is. The sheep – especially Lammchen – helped me to stop pondering why it had happened to me. The water on the dyke is calming anyway, and having a sheep by your side that you can stroke slows you down and calms you down completely. And with every day that I got to know Lammchen better, I fell more in love with him. So it could have been really nice if Lammchen hadn’t been a ram. Male lambs usually face the end at the slaughterhouse. For me, it became more and more of a horror scenario that our lamb of all things should end up on the slaughterhouse.

Lamb – new home wanted

And so the search began for the farmer who owned the herd. He was anything but enthusiastic about the idea of ​​my husband and I buying the lamb. We called him often and even wrote a script beforehand of what we wanted to say. At first he always fobbed us off. He probably thought: The things these city dwellers make up! But we kept at it and eventually we got him to the point where he met us and the sheep on the dyke. For strategic reasons we had my mother, who speaks Low German, with us. To increase our street credibility – after all, the farmer also speaks Low German. And it actually worked. Lämmchen probably played his part too: We had lined up in a circle on the dyke. Lämmchen stood in the middle and took turns running from me to my husband, to my mother and to the farmer, as if he knew what a big moment was taking place, and wanted to be petted each time. I think it was obvious to the farmer too: This sheep cannot go to the slaughterhouse.

At the time we thought: Now there’s a happy ending, we can buy this sheep. I had already researched where he could go. But the sanctuary that had already agreed to take him suddenly canceled and I had to learn that it is almost impossible to find a place for a male sheep anywhere. Nobody wants a male ram – not even a castrated one. I phoned all the stables and paddocks in North Friesland to no avail. They say that rams always become wild and aggressive at some point – whether they are castrated or not. But in the end there really was a happy ending – for me and for Lämmchen: He was allowed to stay where he grew up and is now like an Italian who still lives at home at 40 – still as relaxed as ever. And I was also saved, so to speak: through him I not only learned about the healing power of animals and how to get through crises better, but also that happiness is often found in the little things. In my case: sitting on the dike, looking out to sea and petting a sheep.”

Transparency note: Penguin Verlag belongs to the Penguin Random House publishing group, which, like Stern, is part of the Bertelsmann Group.