While some people trying counting sheep as way of falling asleep, one Worcester Park resident was awoken by an errant ewe wandering through her street.

Michelle Williams was woken at 1am on Sunday night to the sound of bleating in her front garden in Clarkes Avenue.

Initially she thought it was a fox but when she looked out of her bedroom window and saw a sheep wandering around the road.

Dressed in their night clothes, Mrs Williams, 45, and daughter, Jayde, 24, ventured out and tried to lure the sheep towards their home - without a great deal of success.

But Jayde came up with the ingenious idea of recording the sheep bleating on her iphone and then replaying the recording to the animal.

Hearing what it thought was another sheep, the woolly-wanderer finally followed them through the gate at the back of their house and safely into their back garden.

Jayde said: “I then sat up all night with the sheep because all the time I was with her she didn’t make a noise. If I moved away she would have woken the neighbours.”

The sheep even had a slap-up breakfast of bread and shreddies before making friends with the family’s two-year-old pet French Bulldog called Rocky.

Jayde said: “They’ve been touching noses,”

PC Glen Hall, who praised the family’s actions over the welfare of the sheep, said “The sheep was stolen on Sunday night from an animal care unit at the North East Surrey College for Technology in Ewell and then abandoned in Worcester Park.

“It could have been taken as part of a stag party prank.”

The animal was collected at lunchtime Monday by NESCOT and has been reunited with her two-week old lambs.”

Anyone with information about the theft of the sheep and those responsible should contact Sutton Police station on 0300 123 1212.

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