It took years, at the dawn of the twentieth century, for the National Zoo to capture Rocky Mountain sheep. The split hooves and remarkable eyesight of bighorns made these animals virtually impossible to catch alive. This is a story about a national government chasing sheep for the purpose of zoological display. This is also a story about the construction of knowledge, the ironies of conservation, and the building of the American West. More important, this is a story about storytelling. The following tale will call attention to the opportunities that zoological parks, animal history, and narrative history offer the historian.