If you visit Colonial Williamsburg these days, you will find that there's one burning question on everybody's mind.

Everybody's always worried about what Wilbur is.

People will sometimes even email us and say, like, I saw you move Wilbur. Where did Wilbur go?

You get text messages on a daily basis about the whereabouts of Wilbur.

Wilbur is a sheep, a very friendly sheep, and a little one too, just only a year old,

born last year during what's called the lambing season.

Lamming season happens every spring in Colonial Williamsburg.

And it's a really big deal, mainly because these baby lambs are very small and very, very, very cute.

Some people plan their trips to Williamsburg during lambing season for that purpose.

I think the energy around lambing season is always really fun and the weather is nice and the

flowers are blooming and the little lambs are running around. I mean...

And jumping. They like to jump. Yeah, it's really cute. But in addition to being extremely small and extremely cute,

these lambs tell a pretty incredible story about American history.

It's a story that involves sheep smuggling, extinction,

and a president of the United States.

I'm Dolan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

This episode was produced in partnership with Visit Williamsburg.

And today, we are going to Williamsburg to talk about a very special breed of sheep, one that was so prized, so incredibly valuable,

that during the 18th century,

there was a lot of illicit,

under-the-table sheep trading going on.

And after some ups and downs,

...