Three days before Christmas, a wild bighorn sheep wandered out of the foothills of the Santa Rosa mountains, crossed four lanes of busy holiday traffic and stood calmly in front of the new Circuit City store in Palm Desert, California. She was no ordinary sheep. She was Rosie. Rosie was born at the Bighorn Institute, a Southern California research and breeding facility for Peninsular bighorns (Ovis canadensis cremnobates) located in Palm Desert. Her mother, a wild-caught ewe, cared for Rosie until she was four-weeks old. Then, for some reason, the ewe began neglecting her. The biologists placed Rosie on a bottle-feeding supplement, kept her away from human contact as much as possible and prepared her for release in the wild. This routine had worked fine with other bighorn lambs over the years. But Rosie wasn’t like other bighorns. She was eventually released into the Santa Rosas along with two other yearlings. Several weeks later, she appeared outside Bob Hope’s hill-top home overlooking Palm Springs. The locals began leaving food and water for her, and she quickly became the neighborhood’s newest celebrity. The Institute worried that Rosie was becoming too dependent on humans and asked the residents to stop feeding her. Once the handouts dwindled, she headed east where she met up and grazed with a group of wild ewes until one ewe became pregnant. The researchers determined that the group turned on Rosie and drove her out of the canyon. An ordinary bighorn might have wandered aimlessly and died of thirst, predation or any of the man-made hazards that have helped put the Peninsular bighorn on the endangered species list. But Rosie began following and befriending local hikers, accepting handouts of trail mix and fruit. Her fondness for people and their food led her out of the hills, across traffic and into the Circuit City parking lot. Knowing that the number of Peninsular bighorns is steadily decreasing (one estimate puts the total at fewer than 300), those involved in the fight to save them were not about to let a healthy female like Rosie die under the wheels of a car. They took her from Circuit City and resettled her a few days later in the mountains south of the city. That move brought Rosie into my life. As marketing director for The Living Desert Wildlife & Botanical Park, a facility specializing in the care and breeding of endangered desert species, I often handled phone calls concerning wild animals turning up in unusual places. One time it was a cougar in a swimming pool; another, a rattlesnake in the bedroom. But I had never gotten a call like this one. “There’s a big brown sheep banging its head against my sliding door,” the woman on the phone said in a near panic. “I think it wants in.” I told her to hold on while I called someone from the animal department and, no matter what, to not open the door. I later learned that this was not Rosie’s first visit to--of all places--Bighorn Country Club. Tucked into the foothills below where Rosie had been re-released, Bighorn was an idyllic spot for an animal with her special tastes. During afternoon cocktails, some homeowners would entice her on to their patios with handfuls of nuts and carrots. Gardeners arriving just before sunrise would find her sleeping, curled at the feet of the bronze bighorn sheep sculpture at the Club’s entrance. Rosie had found a new home. But her attempt to enter the house overlooking the sixteenth fairway finally put an end to Rosie’s country-club lifestyle. Officials from the Bighorn Institute and the California Department of Fish and Game decided that for her own protection, Rosie should join the captive herd of bighorns at the Living Desert. There, she would be safe and well cared for.