sheep

Outside my office window, just across a gravel road, is a field where sheep graze. There has been more than a dozen of lambs born in the past couple of weeks, and the sight of watching them run across the field is another one of those odd, unexpected gifts of the season.

Sheep are not the brightest of animals, and when the shepherd wants to move the fairly new born lambs and their mothers from the holding pen where they are first kept, he must hold the lamb at the ewe's eye level. She cannot and does not look up, and if he holds the baby lamb too high, the mother will not see it. As long as she sees the lamb, she follows him to the pasture or other pen in the barn.

Lambs frolic and play in ways that one never sees in the adult sheep, running over their moms when they are laying down, chasing each other with their tall gangly legs. Sometimes I see an older sheep running across the field and the lambs are following. Is this exercise, or because they are spooked? Is it a mother who is tired of nursing and looking for a few moments freed from the small ones?