Tuesday, February 1, 2011

February New Born Lamb




Two years ago my friend called and asked if I would take a new born lamb that the mother rejected. I was lost for words, and she seemed to fill the gap with a voice of desperation. In a weak moment, I told her I would.
10 minutes later, she brought the spindly pile of fluff wrapped in a blanket, along with enough milk replacement for a week. She told me, "He's a baby, and he will need a bottle feeding every 4 hours."  Suddenly, the particulars of responsibility felt like a 1,000 pound bolder on my chest, and I was jolted into reality of what I just got myself into.  She also warned, "If he gets scours give me a call as that can get serious."  I took the lamb in my arms, and promised that I would take good care of him, and off she went.
Without haste, I put a crate in the breezeway, laid fresh straw inside, dragged the heater out and placed blankets on the top of the crate so he could be as warm as possible. I made him his first outfit by cutting an old sweater arm off and cut two holes for his front legs to go through. By this time, he was blatting loudly and demanding my full attention-he's hungry! I raced to the kitchen and mixed his milk in a Diet Mountain Dew bottle attached with nipple (Pepsi ought to look into that idea) and ran back to feed him. He didn't take the bottle right away, and I panicked; I had that feeling of inadequacy, partly due to the fact that I'm not a sheep.  So I kept on trying, and finally he started sucking on the bottle; it was at that moment that he looked at me, an epiphany "You're my mother!"
From that time on, he knew what buttons to push, I am not kidding; that little lamb had me dazed and delirious for about a month, almost got me institutionalized.
My husband kept saying  "He's going in the freezer!" "What!", I said, "You pass him every day, how can you even think that?" I was so angry at him- how could he be so cruel, how could he think that cute little lamb as dinner? "I don't eat my young" I protested!
Mulling over parenthood, and after I cooled off, I got thinking, and figured I would let him babysit one day. Sure enough, when I came home he was calling him "My boy" and he even gave him a name "Caesar" because by this time it was the Ides of March, but this Caesar made it through parliament.
 And this is my big pa-lunker lamb now. This is the chair we spent many a March day laying in the sun together, LOL, he thinks he can still do that.

2 comments:

  1. Nice story, he's still a cutie! Your husband sounds like mine...all gruff exterior but when it comes down to it, all talk no action..lol

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  2. Sometimes that gruffness is just show.

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