When asked how a city-girl grew to desire her newfound lifestyle, Elissa replied, I was in a high-stress job in television production. I asked myself, "What job has no stress?" A picture of a shepherd sitting under a tree with his flock around him came to her mind. Then, the very next morning, there was an article in the Los Angeles Times about a shepherd who saved his money and bought a ranch in Bakersfield.

For several days after that, articles about sheep and shepherds kept appearing in the Times. There was an article about Pierce College in Woodland Hills, an agricultural school in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and their sheep unit. Then, an article appeared about a man who lived in Torrance, another Los Angeles suburb, who used sheep to keep his grass mowed down. "It seemed that I was being bombarded by sheep images." Elissa said. A friend who she described these visions to replied that since she loved to knit and loved animals, she should go to Pierce, a.k.a. "Moo U" and take a class.

She started by studying basic animal science. Elissa complained, "It took all semester to get to the sheep. We studied cows, pigs, and chickens first."

Then one evening, two nights before the Thanksgiving break, a student came running into Elissa's classroom. He had come to let the group know about a calf that was just being born. They trudged through the pastures in the dark, wading through cow pies to get to the scene. Elissa saw the birth then immediately had to leave for the airport to attend a family reunion, complete with green cow-muck on the bottom of her pants. She said, "I bought new shoes before taking the flyaway bus to LAX but there wasn't time to do anything about my clothes. I cleaned my pants off as best I could, and realized that I loved animal husbandry. I rode the plane in my dirty clothes and was very happy."

The next semester, Elissa took a sheep production class. She said that at the beginning, leaving work was difficult. She needed to go in the middle of her TV show's production day '5pm' in order to make it by six. But over time, she found that it became easy. "I realized that the balance was changing. Work wasn't as important as my sheep thing. Ultimately, the sheep took over."

Elissa's next classroom project was 'direct study'. She was required to buy three pregnant sheep and track their progress. Before she knew it, her flock had multiplied to nine. Another year passed and Elissa was the proud mom of twenty-five.

Then, fifteen years went by during which Elissa learned to spin wool and became intensely involved in all aspects of fiber arts. She regularly attended sheep conferences including the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, and joined an assortment of spinning and weaving guilds in the Los Angeles area. All the while, Elissa's work options were diminishing due to the changing nature of television. "My career dried up like a prune. I felt there was no other option. I had to make this move before I got too old."

Elissa's new life has been full of surprises including snakes on her front porch, her three city-dogs' attitudes about the wildlife and farm animals that they encountered, and the friends that she knew in Los Angeles who were rediscovered in Eugene. When asked if she's glad that she moved, Elissa replied, "I still feel like I'm on vacation. The other day, after a rainstorm, there was a rainbow that ended in my pond, the one that hosts Canadian geese and bull frogs."