The Water Lamb

By Pixie Chick

 (Susanne Hughes)

    Handing me another lamb, this one cold and wet and very soggy, Tom, the farmer next door chuckled and said he thought this one didn’t have much of a chance, just as he chuckled with all the lambs he brought to me.

    We lived on a tiny property we’d purchased surrounded by farmland, and being former farmers ourselves, I was quite used to the annual influx of orphaned lambs that came through my door each spring.

    I kept two Saanen milking goats who also kidded in early spring and they produced so much milk that I would freeze it and use it on the orphan lambs when they arrived, and the two orphaned calved we would take in as well, or save it for when the nannies had reduced their output then use it on the late lambs. It saved a lot of money by not having to buy dried milk for the orphans.

    Being new to the area, the local farmers took me as a bit of a joke because I volunteered to take all their orphans off their hands as I knew that most farmers on large stations would not even pick them up.

                                                                         

      It was just too much hassle for them to raise pet lambs as they didn’t have the time. That didn’t mean they didn’t care, and when they heard I would take the orphans, they would bring them home and either drop them at my house or I would collect them.

     “He’d been born in a puddle of water; mother just up and left him there,” said Tom.  It was a cold, wet spring morning and the weather didn’t look as though it was going to clear up anytime soon.

    I had the fire going in the dining room which was nice and warm so I put the lamb into an old towel and rubbed him to try and get his circulation going, and to dry him off a little. I always kept goats colostrum in the freezer for the new lambs as many of them were very weak and hadn’t had the first milk they needed to survive.  

    The little lamb was too weak to even suck and I myself had a few doubts as to whether or not he would make it, but I persevered. I ran warm colostrum down a stomach tube to try and start off the warming process and to give the little guy some strength. I moved him onto a special pillow I had made for these little babies who were so close to death, made of an old mutton cloth filled with Angora wool, from our other goat that lived with my in-laws. (Each year we would shear his wool to make him cool for summer, and I kept the fleece for my orphans).

                                                                                

    I continued to gently rub him to keep his little heart going and to help warm him by the fire, and soon he started showing signs of life. I named him Moby.  As the day wore on he got strong enough to hold his head up and as night approached, he could sit up, although he was still quite wobbly. He was holding his own and began to bleat so deciding that he may see the night through, I put him in a plastic lined box with warm dry hay in the bottom.  After two middle of the night feeds, he was gaining.

    Moby made it through the night and before long, was running around all over the lawns and gardens with the other orphans, thoroughly enjoying line up at feed time, with five other heads all vying for the bottles.

    Weeks went by and soon there was no need to keep feeding Moby and his other adopted siblings so he was put out into the paddock with the others, to graze his life away. He would amuse me as he played tag and head butt with the other lambs but his one enjoyment seemed to be sleeping on the tree stumps in the paddock. None of the others ever did that, only Moby, and sometimes he’d sleep so soundly, he’d fall off.

    Months went by and he was happy in the paddock with his mates until one winter’s day, Mike noticed the sheep in Tom’s paddock, where Moby and his siblings were with Tom’s sheep, being chased and he knew there was no-one there. He sped across the paddock on the quad bike, to the opposite corner, and around the end of the hedge spotted two dogs barking at Moby, who was standing in the trough, and wondered why Moby wouldn’t get out.

    Mike shouted and the dogs ran off but Moby was still standing in the trough. As he got to the trough he saw a bull terrier inside the trough lying in the bloody water, holding Moby by the throat. Mike was angry. He knew how much my lambs meant to me and he knew how much I hated seeing packs of dogs on the loose. After a struggle he had managed to release Moby from the dog’s brutal hold, and dragged the bull terrier away from Moby and tied it with a piece of wire, to the nearest pipe.

    He ran back to Moby who was still standing in the trough, and realized the extent of the viciousness and brutality inflicted on my poor defenseless lamb.  His entire bottom jaw was gone, ripped away brutally and agonizingly, by a pack of bored dogs. His tongue hung down on the outside of his neck and blood poured from his severed veins. The only thing Mike could do was put him out of his misery. It was such a sad end to my poor little water lamb that was born in the water, and died in the water.