Battering Ram
I have still yet to decipher the connection between my alma mater’s naming of it’s animal mascot after an Egyptian Pharaoh other than his happens to contain the name of the aforementioned animal mascot, but some rocks are better left unturned. Nonetheless, in the ageless battle of the sheep and wolf – which is less of a battle and more of an unabated ambush – the wolf seems to have an unfair advantage (this time, I am actually speaking of the literal animals themselves and not vicariously referencing any universities in the Tar Heel state, of which, if I were, the order would be quite reversed, I am afraid my bias would have to say). Wolves have the nitrous after-burners on their legs; sheep have stilts and the inner ear coordination of an inebriated man trying to walk the painted line. Wolves run in packs like the phalanx of a Carthaginian army; sheep cluster in herds, like marshmallow Peeps looking pretty and delicate, ready for quick consumption. Wolves typically have a strong alpha male leader; if sheep had a democratic vote on a leader, they would follow him off a cliff, and thus need a shepherd to jerk their necks. Wolves have teeth sharp enough to tear through the skin of, well, sheep; sheep have teeth dull enough to chew the cud. But there’s one thing that sheep (at least male sheep, that is, rams) have that wolves do not: horns. I can say I’ve never seen a ram buck a wolf with its horns as they are usually used to buck another ram in a contest for the female. However, if the sheep were smart enough and had a little divine guidance, like David’s stone that created a concavity in Goliath’s forehead, they could send a compelling message to an approaching wolf, that, if it were a road sign – concise and poignant – would read something to the effect of “Wrong Way” in red and white, or blood and wool (or ‘Red and Black’ if he were a French Sheep bent on revolution, but I digress). The point is, and there is always a point, even the most helpless and meager of creatures still have some grace and glory endowed to them. Like a simultaneous crown and weapon, a ram’s horns raise it from peasant to king and from serf to knight. This simple endowment gives it the impetus to be unrelenting in the battering for its bride. Curiously enough, we don’t name one of the FBI’s most useful tools after a ferocious wolf but after a persistent male sheep – the ‘battering ram’. It is not to the snarling dog that the door is opened, but to the knocker who is persistent, albeit with quite a bit of force. (Matt. 7:7)
