This story is getting a lot of comment in the newsroom and, apparently, in the city and country, because it’s been one of our most-read stories, at The National, for several days.

The “sheep suicide” via jumping off a five-story building here in Abu Dhabi.

Here is the link. Have a look, and we will discuss, below.

The country and the region share many of the ideas common in the West about modernity. Cars, clothes, luxury goods …

This is not one of them.

Apparently, it remains fairly common for amateur butchers to be asked to slaughter domestic animals for human consumption.

Such was the case in this story, where a sheep was taken to the top of a building in downtown Abu Dhabi. The butcher was getting busy when the sheep made a run for it, and plunged off the top of the building and landed on top of a car on the street.

(A lucky thing it didn’t land on a pedestrian.)

The artwork the paper used with the web story is quite handy. Sheep on car, guy with knife looking down from above.

A droll person in a government ministry is quoted as saying, “The sheep preferred to die from falling.”

Anyway, we have stories about “butchering gone bad” fairly frequently. It would seem that X number of folks here will start preparing dinner by slaughtering a goat or lamb (or sheep) in the bathtub, so that the blood drains straight into the sewer. These stories tend to cluster around the two big “Eid” holidays, when big family meals are celebrated.

In this case, we describe the customer as an Arab and the amateur butcher as Asian. (And “Asian” in this part of the world means “subcontinent” — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.)

The story has a couple of helpful tips, near the bottom. That taking an animal to be slaughtered to a licensed government operator is a good idea because they will check to see if the animal is sick or diseased … and a reminder that slaughtering animals in residential areas is against the law. Even on the roof of a five-story building.