Melinda Kendall and her stepmom were strolling down the beach south of Esquimalt Lagoon when they came upon a mysterious sight.
Lying on its side was the nearly intact carcass of a horned sheep. Perplexed by the discovery, Kendall wondered about the origin of the dead animal.
“I don't know how he got here,” she said. “It'd be different if he was all decayed, but he was not; he was in great shape.”
“We looked at it for a bit and… there was no damage like cougar attack or gunshot wound or anything on the side that was facing up.”
Initially believing it to be a bighorn sheep, a species native to the mountainous regions of inland B.C., she found the discovery a “mystery” due to the animal being hundreds of kilometres from its usual habitat.
The Cobble Hill resident, who encountered the animal in the early afternoon of Sept. 7, said she had never seen anything like it before.
Black Press Media contacted the Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship to shed light on the mystery. In an email, the ministry confirmed the species of the animal remains.
“Sheep experts in the wildlife branch determined this is a domestic mouflon ram, not a wild sheep,” reads the email.
The male, estimated to be about six years old, may have been part of a nearby herd, according to ministry experts. This could explain why the sheep ended up washed ashore on Colwood Beach, the experts added.
Black Press Media found no tags or identifying marks on the carcass that could help identify the owner of the deceased animal.
Mouflons, which are members of the sheep family, are native to eastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran. Today, this horned animal is also found in parts of Mediterranean Europe including the islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Cyprus.
Reaching a body length of up to 120 centimetres, with males weighing up to 55 kilograms, mouflons are thought to be the ancestor of all modern domestic sheep breeds.
