Losing Sheep

I have exhausted all options on my eternal search for sleep and am reduced to the cliches. In a bid to find some shut-eye I've started counting those little fluffy clouds with legs. One by one I watch these small balls of cotton wool toddle up to fences and jump over, a pursuit of the tedious. It's not working. My imagination is a kitten on catnip and sheep just aren't that interesting. I get bored after the first few thousand, my mind wanders, one thing leads to another and I get carried away, to speed the whole thing up I'll start sending them over in batches, ten, twenty, one thousand, two thousand. To make matters worse, the sheep get all excited by the commotion and arrange themselves in formations; tall columns of sheep balancing on each others' shoulders, house-high pyramids of sheep precariously teetering on one motorbike-riding little fuzzy fella, lines upon lines of line dancing sheep all can-canning over the stile, you name it, over the rickety little fence in my head the sheep have done it. And then finally I'll be about to nod off and one sheep will just refuse to jump:

John: one thousand and fifty-seven, one thousand and fifty-eight, one thousand and fifty-niiii... fifty-niii... ahem. hello? mr sheep?
Sheep: [silence]
John: would you err.. would you jump over the fence... please?
Sheep: [looks the other way]
John: Mr Sheepy? Please? Jump over the fence?
Sheep: No!
John: What? Why not?
Sheep: I don't want to.
John: But I can't sleep until you jump, you have to, I'm counting on you, c'mon you're holding up the line!
Sheep: I'm not going to. You're mean.
John: Mean? How am I mean? Just shut up and jump!
Sheep: Stop eating us.
John: What?
Sheep: You keep eating us. Stop eating us and I'll jump.
John: Fine fine, I won't eat any more sheep.
Sheep: Promise?
John: Yeh yeh yeh, just jump already.
Sheep: Well ok.
[Sheep jumps fence. Sheep gives loud bleat as sheep lands on
hitherto unseen sheep trap hole thing on other side of fence
which gives way and said sheep plunges towards doom]
John: ha ha! imagine that!