Sometimes lack of context can make you interpret a phrase completely differently from how it was meant. A prime example of this is when a word can be singular or plural but spelled the same, like fish, or deer. This specific construct might explain the anomaly of farmer Pluckman, who, for about an hour now, was keeping himself occupied by being drunk and enraged about his sheep. More specifically, the source of his anger was that no one else at the pub understood exactly what he meant when he said that he had woken up that morning to find his sheep scattered across his field.

The other pub goers thought that he was simply getting worked up about a more or less ordinary inconvenience, everyone had seen their herds of sheep break out and wreak havoc on their farms, this was an infuriating thing, but common enough that no experienced farmer would be so afflicted by it. This was of course because they were thinking, as most anyone would, about a herd of sheep; but if you knew anything about farmer Pluckman, which, obviously, none of the pub goers did, you would know that he only had one sheep.

This simple bit of context quite dramatically changes the phrase "I woke up to find my sheep scattered across the field"

Now, Farmer Pluckman had been quite dissuaded by the less than stellar response he had received from his peers at the King’s Arms.

By last call, he had stumbled out of the pub and into the night like some drunken, shambling tramp, swallowed up by the night and the solitary path home. His entire body ached. His head, pounding with stress that built up behind his eyes like blood. His throat hurt with the effort of ranting. He dreaded it: the return to his farmstead, having to face once again the scattered remains of Fallow, his prized sheep, torn apart by wolves or bandits or God—and so he walked at a pitiful pace, dragging his heavy boots through the mud.

He had other livestock of course, the dairy cows he kept out in the field, the hens in the barn, wheat and potatoes growing round the back. That was the strange thing: whoever had done this had been wanting to target Fallow — wolves would’ve gone for the hens first, and if someone had wanted to attack his livelihood, his fields would have been razed.

Going after Fallow, his childhood pet, a town favorite and prize winner at the village fête every summer, was an act of petty vengeance. And Arthur Pluckman was determined to figure out who: a story that begins with a drunken farmer entering the most notorious crime den in Coptonville.