“A cobbler suspected of sorcery was attacked and nearly lynched by outraged villagers in central Kenya on Tuesday after being caught having sex with a female sheep, witnesses and officials said. Joshua Kiplagat, 36, sustained a serious head wound when the sheep’s owner threw a machete at him after finding him in flagrante delicto with a prize ewe in the Rift Valley district of Bomet, they said. He was then tied to a tree stump for five hours before being frogmarched naked with the violated ovine in tow to a police station where he confessed to several acts of bestiality that he blamed on the devil, they said. ‘I was sent by the devil to do that,’ Kiplagat told the angry crowd which included several people who accused him of being a warlock and one disgusted woman who claimed to have seen him engaging in sex acts with a dog. ‘I saw this man mounting a dog two weeks ago at around seven in the evening and I was so surprised,’ said the woman, who gave her name as Leah. The bloodied shoe repairer adamantly denied allegations that he was a wizard and insisted that his affection for animals was limited to sheep. ‘I only made love to the ewe twice using two condoms but I never do it regularly,’ he said in his defence.” —Independent Online (South Africa)

(Thanks to alanr for the link.)

The cobbler, the ewe, the devil — that’s a peculiar cast of characters. It almost sounds like some sort of perverted Grimm’s fairy tale. In fact, when you first read the story, it’s hard not to notice how the story refers to the perp less frequently by his name than by his occupation — cobbler, “bloodied shoe repairer.” This has the effect of reinforcing the fairy-tale quality. The perp is a cobbler, i.e. a regular guy, like somebody you might know, or maybe like you yourself. He’s the everyman, but then he learns the consequences of dabbling with the black arts. Sorcery leads to bestiality and bestiality to capture. Subsequently the villagers have to exorcise his demons by tying him to a tree stump for five hours.

Actually, once you think about it, the villagers’ revenge may be weirder than the sex act they were avenging. Why didn’t they just think to call the cops in the first place? You can understand that people might act spontaneously, that they might rough the guy up, but to tie him to a tree stump? Who came up with that idea? And how much did they really beat on him? Five hours is a pretty long time, much longer than you’d need for an impromptu thrashing. Did they just leave him there the whole while? Did they beat on him, take a lunch break, and then return to beat on him some more?

Anyway, maybe you can’t blame them. Even if you were a superstitious villager, it would be hard to swallow that excuse about Satan making him do it. After all, the perp remembered to put on a condom before sodomizing the ewe. It hardly seems likely that Satan would ever bother to inveigle you into practicing safe sex.

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