Ever heard the one about the boy who cried sheep?

When Sen. Thad Cochran called up HOH to chat, he regaled us with stories of his family history — and the Mississippi Republican dropped a fascinating tidbit about his childhood.

It turns out young Thad was quite the animal lover. Cochran tells HOH that when he would visit the family farm “way down in the piney woods of east Mississippi,” he would get a little attached to a certain fluffy creature.

Because it was summer, Cochran says, the sheep on the farm had to go through an annual ritual — one so horrifying to him that it drove the young Mississippian to tears.

“When I was a little boy, I used to cry as they were shearing those poor sheep,” he tells HOH, laughing.

Of course, Cochran says, he hadn’t realized that sheep shearing was a common practice and not dangerous to the animals. But his family wasn’t too impressed — when the tears started, they’d send him straight to the house so they could shear the sheep in peace.

Who knew the Senator was such a fan of cute and fluffy animals?