Mothering

Sunday when I saw the ewe having a hard time delivering her lamb I thought of  lambing last year.

Something was wrong. A ewe had broken her water, but instead of laying down to lamb in the paddock, she followed the flock as it moved away from me.  If we were in the barn I could have easily caught her and delivered the lamb if it was ready.  Catching a sheep in an open field is nearly impossible.

I went back to the paddock that afternoon hoping that she’d lambed; but the ruptured amniotic sac still protruded from her vagina. I was almost certain the lamb was dead inside her.  If I didn’t get it out, she would die too.  I moved slowly into the flock: one by one the sheep parted, staying just out of my grasp.  If I couldn’t catch her I wanted to spray mark her if I found a dead ewe in the paddock.   Closer and closer I came, not looking directly at her or any other sheep,  pretending I wasn’t there so they would pretend the same; I got close enough to lunge and spray a red squiggle on her rump as she ran off.  

Early next morning the alluring fragrance of honeysuckles touched me sweetly as I drove past the vines on the way to the paddock.  I cautiously approached the ewes who were still bedded down together.  There she was, red rump, off to the left, down on her side facing away from me.  Was she dead?  She didn’t move as I came up close.  She lifted her head and my hand struck like a rattlesnake. I took hold of her hock as she started to get up; she pulled me to my knees, then onto my belly.  “Drag me through shit honey, but I’m not letting go of you.”  I managed to get my  other hand under her neck to control her and got to one knee, dirty but proud of myself—an open field catch. 

I put my fingers slowly in her vagina and felt a lamb’s two front feet.  Surprisingly the ewe’s body temperature was normal, no fever—a good sign.  I smelled my fingers, nothing—another good sign.  There was no odor of that horrible soup, a decomposing lamb inside a feverish ewe.  I went back in her, aligned the head, took hold of the small hooves and pulled the lamb out swinging it around so the ewe could see it on the grass before her.  It was still, I shook it, it was dead.  

I released the ewe and stepped back.  She started to lick the lamb, then she pawed it trying to make it get up.  She was a good mother. What you feel is what I felt, but there is more than sadness here. 

Its head dangling at my side, I carried the lamb off the field by its hind hooves.  On top of a small rise where I could see the fields below me, I began to spin; I swung the lamb round and round.  I let go and over the honeysuckles it flew, over the elm grove, over the men haying the fields below, over the village steeple, through the clouds and into the welcoming sky.

baa, the Catskill Merino Newsletter  Vol. 2 No. 50   May 28-June 3, 2007