LSA News

No. 76, September 2006

The View from Hidden Spring

(story continued)

It didn't have a head!!! But it must have heard me!

Poor Sara and her lambs. Somehow Sara had put her head in a bucket, and flipped the bail over her ears. She could just barely see over the bucket edge when she lifted her head. Her lambs recognized her baas, but not the scarey head.

The whole flock was very frightened, which only served to scare Sara and her lambs more, so they were all racing around—she was running to the flock and to the llama, only to have them run away from her, creating a HUGE and increasingly synergistic state of hysteria! Sara is generally not a silly ewe, but this was so scarey for a sheep. The only real security a sheep has is with its flock.

When Sara was down by the barn, Kirk and I approached her. Since she feared him more than me (he's the one they see when I give the shots!), he approached her where she could see him, while I came up in her blind spot and tried to flip the bail back over her ears. Unfortunately that didn't work, though we tried twice—the bucket bail was hung up on her wool. So we decided we had to use a different tactic.

Kirk suggested that we flip the bucket instead of the bail, as there appeared to be enough room for her nose to clear the bucket if it was flipped upward towards her back.

Needless to say, by now everyone was feeling at wits' end, though it was so much like a Three Stooges clip I was having a hard time not laughing.

Once again Kirk distracted the ewe, and I moved rapidly up and batted the bucket up and over her back, freeing her from her alien appearance. At once everyone stopped panicking. Sara's ewe lambs came to her immediately to nurse and to reassure her and themselves that all was normal, and the flock looked ... well … "sheepish".

Once again, disaster on the farm was averted, and we realized for the umpteenth time that there is never a dull moment in animal husbandry.

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