Lambsquarters (25 page)

The lambs themselves look different depending on the amount of amniotic sac still clinging to them, on the waxy material within, or on the presence of meconium, the first feces, which the lambs expel before birth if there is stress. The lamblings can be stark white, solid yellow or speckled brown. And occasionally they can be as black as the ace of spades.

IT WAS THE SPRING
of the school exchange. We hosted an Inuit boy from the north and the trees amazed him. The forests. And though he knew everything about hunting and fishing, about slaughtering wild beasts for food, he knew nothing of farming or the cycle of life in sheep.

Our northern visitor arrived during lambing. He watched a pair of living twins being born in record time with little fuss or confusion. But he was disturbed by the sight. Disgusted even. Sickened. He had to leave the barn and was reluctant to return throughout his stay. Perhaps he sensed disorder. Perhaps he knew all was
not as it should be. Certainly he contributed cultural assumptions different from our own.

The mother was attentive to her twin lambs, but indeed something was wrong. Where the ram was sturdy and getting sure of himself, valiantly trying to reach his feet, nosing his mother for first food, the little ewe lamb was floppy. She couldn’t get herself up, despite her energy and determination. Spindly and spastic, she flopped in the birth waters like a boat-trapped trout. She contorted and twisted and tensed, all her synapses working at odds. The suck reflex was there, but she needed support to feed.

My son joined his new friend in the house. Thomas silently shook his head. My daughter rolled up her sleeves and helped me deal with the new one, dry her off, hold her up, ensure she got a bellyful of colostrum from her mother. We involved ourselves in the immediacy of the work to delay the concern and put off the solution, just focused on the problem at hand right there in front of us. Every few hours we went back to the barn to check, to assist in her feeding. She was eager, she was hungry, and her mother loved her. A survivor.

THE BOOKS
call it “daft lamb syndrome,” a typical veterinary descriptor like blue bag for mastitis, or black leg or pizzle rot. Unlike human medicine, which revels in obfuscating meaning between practitioner and
patient, animal disease talks plain. At first I wondered if the lamb had a case of swayback, with her twisted neck and permanent glance over her left shoulder. For the first few days she could not stand at all. I had to help every few hours, day and night, to hold her to the teat and let her suck. Most farmers would have thrown her on the manure pile; she had no future as a breeder.

Over the years I’ve lost and I’ve saved many critical lambs. Cold and weak newborns, barely breathing, have come into the house in towels under my barncoat to be put by the wood stove, propped on a hot water bottle, dried with the hair dryer. I’ve fed them brandy to boost their energy, colostrum through a tube, or with a syringe if they can suck at all. I’ve had precarious little beasts revive, bleat, shake and stand on wobbly legs in their box, graduate to a child’s playpen when mobile and accept the humiliation of disposable diapers with a hole cut for the tail.

The successes are enormously gratifying. But they are mixed with many failures. The lamb left too late. The one too cold. The pneumonia that gallops ahead of the antibiotics. The sorry of spirit.

When I was pregnant with my own children, we lambed early to have the ewes’ labours over before mine began. But the cold was vicious and the losses were great. I’d trudge with my big belly to the barn, lumber over gates and crouch awkwardly to help. I’d question my adequacy to mother when my ability to shepherd was
impaired. More than once, the house sheltered babies of both species—in and out of wool—all in diapers.

Finding a dead newborn is devastating. Not attempting to revive a weak one is unthinkable. It might have been easier, when my children were small, to dispose of moribund lambs than to have them die in the house, hear their death rattles and watch their muscular fasciculation after they gave up the ghost. But disposing of them is not a possibility. Sometimes they recover. I have to try.

Despite the wonky lamb’s grave problems, she had the determination of a coon raiding the feed room. She would tense her muscles and will her survival, founder and fall and finally flop up onto unsteady feet. She was able only to circle to the left. But she was up.

I left her with her mother as warmth wasn’t a problem and I couldn’t risk her rejection. I believed she would learn to feed herself—negotiate a path to her mother’s teat, latch on, stay and suck. But whenever she got close to the udder she’d continue in a circle again, away from the very thing she longed to capture.

The dam felt confined in the small pen. She stomped, wanted out. Her patience waned, as did mine; no longer would she stand while I held the squirming lamb to suck. I got out the bottle.

Helen, as my daughter named her, for Helen Keller, took to the bottle. She stiffened and shook, spilled and sputtered, left as much milk on us as inside her, but she
wanted to live, she wanted to eat. With wool matted around her neck, she smelled sour. But she charmed like a heartbreaker, a beauty, a Helen of Troy.

She thrived on her feeds and tied me down to a schedule in the barn and a chore in the house. Sheep’s milk has more fat than cow’s, so I buy a special powder to feed a bottle lamb. The formula mixes poorly with water, making my kitchen a mess of blender, bottles and spills. A lamb needs six feedings a day for the first while and is not like an infant human, who nuzzles the breast in the warmth of the bed and is returned to the crib across the hall or stays to snuggle until morning. Artificial lamb feeding means alarm clocks in the house to heed needs in the barn. I must wake, dress in boots and heavy coat and mix the gloppy mess of coagulated milk. I warm the bottle in a beaker of water, distrusting the microwave to preserve nutrients, and carry it sloshing across the yard. The journey is dark and cold, but the silly broken lamb’s delight paid dividends. The sleepy flock, too, squinting from the light, entertained me with yawns and stretches, chuckles and bleats. Ewes lying down, their lambs on their backs or tucked into their flanks or under their noses. Little family clusters arranged within the pen. Helen stiffened on my lap, her rigid muscles in constant flex. But her good eye shone with pleasure and her mouth worked away.

In spring my son visited the Arctic, set out on a snowy journey with his new friend and learned the
details of the hunt. At home, dealing with the domestic, I tried putting daft Helen out with the main flock, but she couldn’t cope with a six-acre field. When the others came into the barnyard she lagged behind, travelling in circles, oblivious to the rules of direction. In the tiny Sidefield, which is less than an acre and narrow, she could navigate crookedly along the fence to straighten out her circles, and find me or my daughter when we brought her bottles, which dwindled down to four a day, then three, and finally two. Her path through the pasture was patterned like a pulled-out Slinky, around and around until, after overshooting, she finally connected with the bottle and sucked it dry, snorting and huffing and making it her life’s work.

Her hunger woke me every morning, and her gratitude rewarded the early rising. She was always ecstatic to see me in my ratty coveralls, pulled on over my nightshirt, bottle in hand. Helen marked the dawn and the dusk. She woke the farm and put it to bed with her baby bleats, reminding me daily of possibility and promise, of conviction and tenacity. Her head was sideways, her legs crooked, and she had about as much stability as a drunk walking a line.

I watched her all that summer. She listed wildly to the left and her front legs were misshapen and misdirected, splayed and awkward. She grazed, but on a tilt, unable to compensate for the earth’s curve. A flat-earth lamb. Between steps she looked almost normal, her
head askew, puzzled, working out a problem. Her belly was distended from the bottle feeds, her muscles lax, her wool lank. She couldn’t see with one eye. But she ate, she grew, she felt the sun on her back and gave no sense of being censured. Her mother answered her bleats, and her brother encouraged her grotesque parody of gambolling in the evenings, when lamb devilment peaks.

Even after weaning, Helen needed the fence to guide her to water and oats. She spent the autumn with the other yearlings, avoiding the truck and the market. When the ewes were bred, I let her run with the flock, certain that the ram would avoid her, leave her alone. And he did. She spent the winter in the barn, moving back and forth with the others to the courtyard for fresh hay each morning. She found herself a spot at the manger for grain, sidled up to the water bowl, nuzzled into the straw each night and slept her crooked sleep. She never straightened out, never learned to walk without a list, never mated, lambed, nursed. But she gave us all her special favour of attention; she was tame to anyone who cared to pet her.

My shearer just glared at me that March. Then softened and lovingly removed Helen’s wool, which was matted, she thought, from an inability to shake. The undersheep. Kept, not killed. Helen found her spot in the flock, as mascot, touchstone.

By spring she was still going in circles, but had mastered the art of the field. Always last to the barnyard,
Helen could almost keep up. She no longer needed a small space, and the new crop of lambs played with her. She began to fit in. No longer falling over, she could jump with the others. She was a springy sideways creature, barrel-bellied and contorted, fun-loving and carefree.

But what about fall breeding? Helen couldn’t foster lambs. Couldn’t hold still to feed them or find them or keep up with them. That was a problem I never solved. One morning in October, just before Thanksgiving, Helen lay sleeping in the fold. But as I approached her, I recognized the ultimate sleep. Not a sign on her, not a clue. Just lying dead, muscles finally relaxed. She was so calm and unbent, I had to look over the others to be certain it was her. Helen, that daft lamb who flopped into this world and fought her way through, died in her sleep overnight amongst the flock she learned to graze with.

I clipped some fleece that day. Just enough to make something to remember her by. It lies in a basket, lofty and white, waiting for the perfect moment, the right project, the distance I need to touch her again. So she will once again touch me, as she did the moment she spilled into the world, thrashing and gasping. A wee bent animal, terrifying to behold, but full of the most remarkable frustrations and pleasures.

RACCOON

AFTER THE THANKSGIVING
bounty, after the glorious sunsets of Indian summer, when fall merges into winter and the cold rises and the days diminish, the sheep stay close and the summer animals disappear. The groundhogs go under and the coons find their dens. Chipmunks bed down in subterranean condos. There is time to reflect on the passages of the year, on the visitors, the parasites and the thieves.

Now that my children are in their teens, I remember back to my own youthful days. I watch them interact with small children, with animals. I dread telling them of Helen’s demise, then marvel at their acceptance, their energy and their patience. The summer I was fifteen, I looked after my cousin’s children in Muskoka, as a mother’s helper. She taught me many things: to drive, to make jam, to sail, to think very hard before having babies. There were adventures, a
couple of love interests, a lot of frustrations and a baby raccoon.