We have a bottle-baby (rejected lamb) this year. He prances around
the house in a diaper and tries to eat my calendar. Last Friday night our
family took a twilight “nature walk” around the property. Our lamb bounced
along behind us, through the pasture, swamp and woods. He was eagerly following
“the legs.” Those were the last pair of legs that had given him milk, and he
wasn’t about to let them get away. He had sniffed those legs carefully after he
nursed, imprinting himself on them. So when I decided to take a shower and “the
legs” suddenly collapsed in a pile next to the laundry hamper, he stayed next
to them. The pair that emerged from the shower didn’t smell quite right and
weren’t worth following. I climbed into bed and placed a towel on the ground,
thinking he would join me there for company. But he folded up his little body
on top of the empty pants, still slightly warm, that had so recently fed him
and led him safely home. For a moment I
glimpsed life from a sheep’s perspective, where survival depends wholly on
staying as close as possible to the right-smelling pair of legs and the udder that
hangs between them.
It’s probably the cutest month we’ve ever experienced. A box
of velvet-soft puppies whimpering in the loft, a pasture springing with baby
lambs, and kids giggling as they swing side-by-side over a dandelion-speckled
lawn. To make it all happen is so much work and worry, especially around the
new births. But we enjoy…
[Blog interrupted due to life. See July.]
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