THERE is something inherently funny about the idea of rustling – of a little shake in the bushes and suddenly, magically, a couple of sheep have disappeared.

But this week’s figures show that it is no laughing matter – 89,000 sheep were rustled in this country last year worth £6.6m. Of those losses, £1m occurred in North Yorkshire and the North-East – presumably because our rural areas are close enough to conurbations for the sheep to be entering the food chain within an hour or two of being rustled from their field.

Rustling isn’t, though, an excuse for a rural joke. It is stealing. It is theft – a serious crime. That people find it funny probably shows how little they understand rural life.

Julia Mulligan, the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, had a good way of looking at it.

"If £40,000 of jewellery was stolen out of the front of a jeweller’s shop, people would instantly what it meant,” she said on Wednesday. "When £40,000 of sheep go, people have a bit of a titter and think it's funny, but it isn't. It's not only £40,000 of stock that's gone, it's a farmer's entire life work very often in breeding those lines of sheep."

A jeweller’s shop, though, is protected by thick glass and a noisy alarm. By contrast, a farmer’s valuables are unprotected in the open – in fact, the public are invited to ramble on footpaths through his valuables while he is not there.

North Yorkshire’s response will probably raise more tittering – officers are being taught to recognise sheep, from mule gimmers to zwartbles, so they can differentiate between the legitimate and the rustled.

Perhaps it is churlish to point out that in olden days, a rural bobby in a country station would have had those skills because it is good to see our town-based police taking rural rustling seriously.