Before Dawn

Since acquiring farm animals, my sleeping has become lighter and my need to get up multiple times a night to investigate sounds a more frequent event. I'm not talking about the kind of sounds that city-folk up in the middle of the night; such as, "did I hear something in the back yard?" The sounds that wake me up are "was that a coyote in the pasture?" or "what did the cat bring in?" (On that last one, see an earlier post called "Mouse in the Night")

Last night I was up in the middle of the night because I heard one of the sheep baahhing. My first step, always, is to look down off the back deck to see if I can see all of the sheep. They have a light on in their pole barn at night. Last night, I could see all four. I have no clue what they were upset about. I went back to bed and the cats joined me. For the next hour the cats kept pestering me for petting.

As I got out of the shower, I opened the window to let the steam out and one of the lambs was baahhing like crazy. I mean like there was something seriously wrong, like her leg was being chewed off by a coyote. I flew out onto the deck, naked (it was still dark and raining) but I couldn't see any of the sheep and the lamb was even louder. I threw on jeans and a flannel, flip flops and a hat; grabbed a flash light and ran down to save our little lamb from what seemed to be pending death. As I came around the corner of the barn, the baahhing stopped and all four came calmly walking around into the pole barn. No blood, no limping, no nothing. What the ...!