admiring the buzzard dropping from its usual telegraph pole to the riverside trees, i was heading for the bottom of the field almost by accident…..a cup of tea too hot on a cold afternoon to put down and let get tepid while i fed the pigs, i took off around the long way to see if the sheep had nibbled at the not-yet-protected walnut trees fresh in the ground
the sheep still as usual this late in the afternoon, one seemed to be looking at me from much further away than normal….the long wool seems to shorten their sphere of perception beyond just covering their eyes, but this one seemed to be following my steps from the moment i entered the field….all of this registered so far back in my brain that its only now that i remember faintly noticing the strangeness of it
within 30 feet and she moved….behind, a tiny tiny mass of curls, a cloth, perhaps a card surround for the fencing wire discarded by the contractors, it took what seemed like 5 minutes of brain time but a second in real time for all the unlikely possibilities to conveyor belt through my mind before i could believe that it was the most obvious, a lamb
her first, our first
perhaps its the fantastic nature of ‘life’, the impossibility of it, but it actually went through my head that it must be my cream fleece which minutes before i had hung up indoors
shit, its late, a friend calling in by luck for half a pigs head ive been promising him for days, we have to drag a pig ark a few hundred yards for some protection, get some feed for the mum, a spade to bury the afterbirth, some water….to many things, the sun will simply have to slow down dropping
another friend drops in, done this before, knows what hes doing, and as we haul the ark on its back into the field we see it….another lamb in the hedge, 50 yards from the others
picking her up to join the others was like entering another world, no, it WAS entering another world….another domestic drama, so ordinary, so not ordinary
the mother wouldnt take her, butting away one, accepting the other, then butting the second, accepting the first, she was certain of only one thing – she only wanted one lamb….an hour or two placing the rejected next to the accepted, putting her back when butted, taking away the favoured one til she bonded with the other, and so it went…..i think theyve both had a feed, but im not certain they will both be accepted
and all this an hour ago
