The sheep roam free around the Forest of Dean area (Picture: Tom Wren SWNS)
A group of weary residents have launched a petition in protest against a herd of bothersome sheep.
The animals are upsetting locals in the Kidnalls Drive estate in the Forest of Dean, by eating flowers and bleating noisily late into the night.
Homeowners have even resorted to protecting their plantlife with bricks and wires to stop the sheep from snacking on them.
But multiple complaints from the human inhabitants of Kidnalls Drive have fallen on deaf ears.
Shepherd Jeremy Awdry insists the sheep have the right to graze wherever they please in the forest thanks to a law from the Middle Ages.
Yet the locals have hit back against the sheeps’ legal argument – saying the forest boundary is 30 metres away from the estate, officially making them pests.
They have now said they have suffered long enough, and are launching a petition against the sheep.
Jeff Beveridge, 65, says villagers are asking for a cattle grid to be built to stop the sheep from being able to come and go as they please.
The sheep are ruining front gardens across the estate (Picture: Tom Wren SWNS)
He said: ‘We can’t grow anything out the front. In the front of everybody’s house the developers put escallonia, a nice flowering shrub, and the sheep ate that. They’ll eat anything.
‘If the lambs are distressed and they can’t find the ewe, their mother’s looking for them and both of them will be bleating all the time.
‘We can hear them at night and in the early hours of the morning they’ll be here.’
Retired university lecturer Dr David Collier, 69, has lived on the estate for two-and-a-half years and said he used to wonder why there were no flowers anywhere.
Their bleating also keeps villagers up at night (Picture: Tom Wren SWNS)
He said: ‘When we were looking at the housing estate we were surprised that nobody had any flowers in their front gardens.
‘We came in November 2020 and in the early spring we heard sheep and we saw lambs in our front garden which was initially rather sweet.
‘The sheep are completely uncontrolled. They can’t help it and Awdry can’t control the problem. There needs to be a physical barrier.’
Cedric Ansermoz, a 72-year-old retired power station worker, confirmed the sheep do not ask whether they can eat the villager’s plants.
Villagers want their noisy unofficial neighbours to be evicted (Picture: Tom Wren SWNS)
He said: ‘When we first moved in we had a couple of bushes by the front door. They got eaten. We had a few plants too. They disappeared. The sheep don’t ask.
‘It’s frustrating. You have to tolerate them but it’s just frustrating you can’t have a decent garden.
‘The other obvious problem is the mess they make.’
Mr Awdry, the shepherd, has now been expelled from the local association of graziers for not keeping his sheep within the Forest’s boundaries.
The sheep have been leaving pungent gifts for locals (Picture: Tom Wren SWNS)
Despite his punishment, he denied the estate was outside the grazing boundary and said his sheep caused no damage to people’s gardens.
He said: ‘The association says it’s outside the boundary but I don’t think it is actually.
‘The sheep have got the right to wander. It’s not a lot of people complaining. It’s only one or two causing a lot of trouble.
‘The sheep are hardly ever there. Can you see any damage there? No.’
He added: ‘No one has complained to me directly. If someone asked me to move them, I’d move them.’
Over in Wales, an eerily similar situation is occurring.
Around 30 of the fluffy creatures have marched into the streets of Neath Port Talbot, a village in Godre’rgraig, Wales.
Children have been left unable to play outside due to ‘mounds of sheep muck’.
Stephan Jones, 37, told WalesOnline: ‘It’s been going on for at least four or five weeks.
‘I got up one morning and there was two sheep in the garden so we shooed them on and they just keep coming back and back and back.’
He said there were around 30 sheep in total which had roamed the streets and roads of the village for the past month.
‘They’re everywhere,’ he added.
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‘The sheep are completely uncontrolled.’