Cherise came by my table, where Paul and I were sucking down water after a run at the Farmer Bill's Petting Farm. "You know, Jason, the sheep aren't right," she said. I nodded.

Cherise was a sheep collectors: sheep everything. Sheep toys, keychain, magnets, all kinds of doodads.

"The sheep are fine. What could be wrong about a sheep? Look at them. They're fine. They wake up, eat, walk around, take a dump, then they sleep," Jason said.

"No. Look at them. Their hooves are on backwards," Cherise argued.

So they were. How do hooves go on backwards? Four sheep, wandering around their corral, with their legs working fine, but with their hooves just the opposite way they should be.

***

There is no Farmer Bill. It was a name the park district people thought would be fun and easy to market. They hired Mike Fitzgerald, a retired English teacher, to guide the kids around, explaining the ways of farming. He conveniently looked like Mr. Green Jeans from the old "Capt. Kangaroo" TV series, but this resemblance was lost on eight year-olds who never heard of the good Cap'n. and certainly not Mr. Green Jeans.

He always began the tour by saying, "Howdy, Little Pardners, I'm Farmer Bill, and we're gonna take a look-see at the wonders of a living, working farm. We've got goats, and cows, and a couple of horses, and over there, we've a few sheep. And, woo-wee, you know we've got old Lou, our prize-winning pig. No question about that, and she needs a bath!" The kids, almost all raised by soccer moms and overworked dads, loved his easy-going, tongue-in-cheek shtick.

When there were no tours, Mike managed the coffee kiosk where Paul and I would rest after running a few miles around the property. He liked the kids well enough, but didn't know much about farming. He played the role, said 'yup', 'howdy,' and had the perfect one-leg-on-the-fence lean. With a few days of an nurtured beard, he could sell anyone he grew up in the middle of Illinois, all the while with a blade of hay between his teeth.

***

Cherise panicked. The stench of a fresh farm may have been too much, or seeing her precious sheep (all sheep, by her account, were, in some way, hers) in an incorrect state of hoof.

"We need to tell someone," she suggested.

"Mike already knows," Jason said, "Hey, Farmer Bill, whatcha know 'bout these sheep?"

"What about them? They smell bad, don't bite, and… That's about it. Aren't you too old for the farm tour?" Mike called back from the coffee kiosk.

"No, Mike. The hooves are wrong."

"Say what? What do you know about sheep? You grew up in the burbs." Mike said, though, he himself grew up in next door Laderville, voted by American News and World Chronicle as one of most beautiful suburbs in the USA.

"See for yourself."

***

Water tastes great after a hard six miles. Jason's the better runner, with a 37-minute 10K under his belt. That's pretty good at 40. He's barely 40, but no longer 39. Me? I'm just a 45-minute plugger. We run just once a week together as a result. I run hard, he runs easy, and it evens out.

The farm's a good place to begin and end the run. A system of crushed limestone trails reaches out from it. Tuesday mornings have worked out well for us. We hit the trail at 10 a.m., run until almost 11, then kick back until around noon. A quick, early lunch, and back to work. We've been at this a few years, and never really noticed the sheep before.

Cherise worked the kiosk with Mike. Kids would come through, and Mike would don his Farmer Bill hat, and go off to the farm tour. Cherise took over the kiosk, pouring coffee, Pepsi, and Slushies. This was a hobby job for her. Her husband, Marty, was an engineer for TinySoft. Good money. For her, this was fun, and fed her sheep connection need.

***

Cherise began a diatribe about hooves, and why sheep are more advanced animals than commonly given credit.

"Smarter than dolphins, that's for sure. Merinos. That's what these are. That's a type of sheep. The best kind," said Cherise. "Good looking coats. Great wool. They can remember other sheep too. I have a sweater of super fine merino wool…" She kept talking, forgetting that we had four sheep with their hooves on wrong.

Mike was on his cell, trying to explain to the president of the farm what was going on.

"Listen, I'm not sure what to tell you. The hooves are pointing the other way. No. No. This isn't possible. Hooves are stationary. They should not move," he explained with the patronizing tone of a seventh grade science teacher.

***

We went to the gate to meet the president and his assistant, and when came back, the hooves were fine, just like they were the day before.

"Rich, the hooves were…" Mike trailed off. It was pointless. What could he say?

Rich Lanier, the president, and former rural veterinarian, looked at the ground, and noticed the pattern in the dust, "These prints are out of sequence. They switch directions. See. Here."

After his assistant took a few pictures, Rich said, "It's my birthday. I'm taking the rest of the day off. There's nothing to do here."

Mike went back to the kiosk to help a customer, shaking his head.

Jason looked at his watch, noticed it was noon, "I should go. I've got a one o'clock call. Come on, Paul."

Dumbfounded, Cherise just stared blankly at the corral. "This is going on my blog. But what do I say? Why did this happen?"

"Why? Today is the big anniversary of the wool monger," said the sheep standing in the northeast corner, "We were naked before this, and he clothed us," he went on.

"We always do this. Where we're from, the switching of our hooves means we are remembering where we've been while going we're going. It is a sheep thing." He turned his head, stuffed his face into the trough, and that was that. Nothing more.

Really. The sheep said that. I heard it. Cherise heard it. Paul heard it. Mike, of course, missed it.

"See you next week, Cherise," we said, getting into Jason's car. There was nothing that could be said. After all, these were just sheep.

The following Tuesday, Jason and I pulled into the lot at Farmer Bill's, Mike was giving a tour, "And, right here, just last week…" Mike stopped. He couldn't continue. Showing third graders where four sheep, briefly, changed their hooves, would only cause more trouble than he could manage. What happened could not have happened, so, as far as telling the story was concerned, didn't happen.

"Tiger lilies are blooming," said Cherise, not mentioning anything about sheep.

"Hi Cherise. See you in an hour."

That's all that happened. You can go to the farm and see, but the sheep look like sheep. Maybe next year.

These are the days in Bluster County which give me the blues, but I would live nowhere else. The sun rises an inch higher here than anywhere else in the world, making every day brighter.

• You might not find Farmer Bill's Petting Farm, but you will find Cosley Zoo.
• Illinois Prairie Path - An excellent crushed limestone trail used for running, biking and hiking in DuPage County.