Shrek's golden fleece finally comes off

By MONIQUE DEVEREUX

In the end he was just another spindly, skittery sheep.

Once shorn on national television - a broadcast that went to Japan, Australia, Britain and the US - the enigma that was Shrek, the Central Otago superstar, disappeared.

He no longer looked like his namesake. He just looked confused and cold.

It all began two weeks ago when the wether was discovered high on Bendigo Station near Tarras, woolly and wild and sporting a merino fleece of six years' growth, having eluded many an annual muster.

He was captured and brought down to the homestead, where a visiting Hawkes Bay pony club team dubbed him Shrek.

The wool and the meat on the 9-year-old were not worth much to station owner John Perriam.

But the fleece "is worth a goldmine and more" to the Cure Kids charity, says chief executive Kaye Parker.

She has organised for the shorn wool to be auctioned online to raise money for sick children.

Interest from media in New Zealand and across the world about the hermit sheep finally being caught prompted Mr Perriam to select Cure Kids as the recipient of proceeds from the shearing.

The Shrek hype spread across the globe, from Alaskan newspapers and Chinese news websites to the BBC and CNN.

The news was out - a very woolly sheep had been found in NZ and it was going to be shorn. The media frenzy did not let up last night as the cameras and reporters descended on Cromwell.

Peter Casserly, a former world blade-shearing champion, peeled Shrek's coat off with ease and nicked the skin only twice. Soon it was all over.