So yesterday - the first of April - I had an appointment to get my hair cut. It being my day off, I scheduled it for 11:00, the earliest available slot. I slept in a bit, waking to an odd drifting snowfall: sparse, light flakes, floating randomly about in the air - not just downwards toward earth, but upwards, sideways, swirling in invisible eddies in apparent defiance of gravity and other laws of physics. I wondered at first if it was ash fall - Mount Redoubt has been blowing her stack with some regularity for a while now - but outside I caught a flake and inspected it. Nope, snow. Just odd snow.
After getting my hair all buffed and polished in a lovely spa-like atmosphere (the new digs of my hairdresser), I drove home through the random swirl of snow. For some reason - call it a whim, call it a hunch - I went out to Wildwood to check on the proceedings there. As it happened, no one was at home, and there were two fresh lambs down, still wet.
I gathered the towels and sweaters and iodine and went down to tend to matters. There were two ewe lambs, one black and one white, out of my second black ewe, Mesquite. The black one - smaller, but drier - appeared to have been born first. I iodined her umbilical stump and put her in a sweater. The white one, somewhat larger, seemed weaker. She was making a horrible seal-cough and walking on her knuckled fetlocks on the front legs. Well, fresh baby, hasn't had much time yet to get things working; I iodined her and sweatered her and hung about to see what was up.
After an hour I was not sure she'd yet nursed. She'd tried plenty often, but she was having trouble on her front legs, and was often interrupted by her seal-bark cough. I tried holding the ewe and putting the baby on the teat at the same time, but as it turns out I need two more hands for that operation, or else arms approximately 9 feet long. So I went inside and called R on her cell.
R was in Anchorage, but S was on her way home, so I waited until she arrived and changed into her grubbies. In the interim, the white lamb had not improved much; S related to me that she'd thought the ewe would lamb the night before, because she'd been dripping fluid from her vulva. We both wondered if perhaps the white baby had aspirated as a result of a prolonged pre-labor phase, or during the lambing itself.
As it turned out we were unable to get the white lamb to nurse, and the stress of trying to make her do so exacerbated her cough as she shuffled along on her wrists. Reluctantly, I made the decision to pull the lamb for bottle rearing. It's always better to have the mother rear the baby; typically they are way better at it than we are, and there are other considerations, such as the fact that once you begin hand-rearing, your window for returning the baby to the mother is short, and the fact that, should you have to bottle-rear the baby, you can't (unless you are more heartless than I) later slaughter it for food. And then of course there is the consideration that a bottle-baby is a bit of a cramp in one's style, since it needs to be fed repeatedly in the night, and can't be left to fend for itself should you wish to, say, go out to dinner and a movie with your boyfriend. Still, this is a ewe lamb, who has potential future value (if she does well) as a breeding (and possibly dairying) animal. Moreover, it became increasingly apparent through the afternoon that should I not have pulled her, she would have died.
To begin with she wasn't a good suckler; this may have been in part that she was weak and tired and cold, and it may have been in part that her breathing interfered with suckling properly. I managed to get some colostrum (milked the day before off of Silver, she of the singleton ram) into her, but it was slow going. A little later in the evening, when she was dry, I took her sweater back to S&R at Wildwood; after all, if she was going to be living inside, she wouldn't have need of it, and there are 2 ewes and 4 does yet to give birth out there. While there, We gave the baby some fluids subcutaneously, as well as a shot of penicillin, in case of aspiration pneumonia; while anything the baby might have aspirated would be sterile at the time of aspiration (having come from the confines of the uterus), the outside world is most assuredly NOT sterile, so this was something in the way of prophylaxis. Additionally, she was still walking with her front hooves knuckled over, although in all honesty I thought that this was something that would likely straiten out, so long as I could get her to survive her first few days.
A little later in the evening, the baby suddenly seemed to learn something about suckling, and abruptly started to nurse vigorously. She grew fat and round on my lap, going through all the colostrum in a few feedings, becoming somnolent, limp and quiet after the third one. While that is certainly a relief from the fractious, plaintive, incessant and increasingly-frantic bleating of earlier in the evening, it's one of those silences that makes you check to see if she's still breathing. She was; I snuggled her up in a flannel sheet and settled her in. Every so often she would give a congested little wheeze, but for the most part she seemed content, dozing near Pepper's watchful bulk.
This morning she is slightly better, essaying a few awkward hops, following me from room to room on her still slightly bucked-forward legs, bleating in her high-pitched voice. She seems perfectly content to be wearing a diaper - although she dislikes it when I seize her tail and pull it through the hole I cut in her Huggies for this purpose - and, while she doesn't like the milk replacer anything like as well as she did the colostrum (smart girl), she seems reasonably content to drink it. She still develops a worrisome wheeze after drinking for a few moments, but it dissipates quickly; I've checked her for a cleft palate and found none, so I'm not sure what to make of this wheeze just yet.
Meanwhile Ali is both fascinated and terrified of her. Kenzie's main interest in her is a hope to share her bottle. Finn, Raven and Pepper are tightly focused upon her, although Pepper seems inclined to treat her as a combination of sheep and bratty puppy, gnashing her teeth with sharp clicks when the baby ventures too near, and at other times attempting to herd her (usually at inopportune moments, such as during a diaper change). Having been born of a black ewe, the baby seems unfazed by the crowd of large furry black bodies around her; and after all, she has no alternate expectations. This is the world as she knows it, and she has little knowledge of anything else.
One thing is for sure, however: If there was any doubt before, this should convince everyone that I am indeed the world's biggest idiot. This is JUST what I need - another convalescent animal living in my house, and this one not only not house-broken, but also in need of every-four-hourly feedings through the night.
April fool, indeed.
Showing posts with label bottle lambs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bottle lambs. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Gumby-goo, Round Two
A little more about Gumby, while he's fresh in people's minds.
On Saturdays, the clinic closes at two, and it's a lovely thing, on a tender, warm spring afternoon, to come home from work, feed your lamb, and then maybe lay on your bed and have a little read whilst the dogs and cats and diapered lamb all meander peacefully about your room. One such afternoon, I was laying head-to foot on my bed, my feet propped up on my pillows and the rest of me propped up on my elbows, belly-down and enjoying a good mystery story. My bedroom has one wall composed almost entirely of a sliding glass door (leading out onto a balcony and a spectacular view of the lake and the Chugach mountains). For the sake of privacy, but in service of letting in as much light as possible, I have a set of sheers hanging there. On pretty days, they let in abundant light and a somewhat misty version of my view, and the fabric of the sheers seems in some way to capture and magnify the light, so that there's a soft extra glow to them.
On this particular afternoon, I fell asleep over my book. I wake up a little while later, my face turned toward the light, and I think, in a dreamy, luxurious sort of way, how pleasant it is to have a little mid-day nap, and how pretty the light is coming in through the curtains, and how adorable and striking it is to see little black Gumby-goo silhouetted against the glowing white backdrop....
A tiny frown forms on my brow. What is it about Gumby's posture that is catching my eye? He's just standing there... but oh, crap, his back is hunched in the urination posture. I bolt up, preparing to snatch him up and shunt him, still peeing, out onto the easily-washed balcony - and then I realize: He's urinating directly into my shoe. I think: Which is easier, shampooing the carpet and washing the deck, or taking the liner out of my shoe and tossing it in the laundry? I subside, a wryly amused little smile taking hold of me as I watch Gumby finish urinating blissfully into my cross-trainer. Done with his task, he looks at me, essays a little bleat of contentment, and begins chewing meditatively on the curtain. Oh, well. I was going to replace those anyway.
At the time I had Gumby, I also had (amongst others) a dog named Buddy. Buddy was meant to be a Border collie, but he was (as the BF, from whom I inherited Buddy, liked to say) more of a BorderLINE collie. Buddy was strange and delightful and so not what a working dog is bred to be, but I loved him with all my heart - more because of his strangeness than in spite of it, to tell the truth. Buds was never in life going to approximate anything even remotely resembling a stockdog, but he was, bless his pointed little heart, perfectly content to share his world with an increasingly-bratty diaper-wearing lamb. Buddy was tall and narrow, built like a sight-hound, with a deep, deep chest and a tiny little wasp-waist, lean ropey arms and thighs fat with muscle. He was a tri-color merle, with long silky feathers disguising his race-car build, and chocolate eyes capable of the sultriest glance this side of Savannah. He was shy and coy and when stressed would panic to the mental shut-down point, where he simply ran out of thought about what to do next, and could only try to run away from it. But he was kind-hearted and gentle, and possessed of a silliness and joy of being that were irresistible. He was a charming dog, strange and unique, and I suppose (with him four years in his grave) that I will miss him forever.
One afternoon, not long after Gumby christened my shoe, I was again lounging head-to-foot on my bed with a book. Buddy, standing bedside, began to essay his peculiar high, scribbly growl.
"Knock it off, Buddy," I said, mildly, figuring he was defending his spot against encroaching dogs. But Buddy's growl ratcheted up a notch in pitch and volume, and began to take on an odd hitching effect, like if you went "Aaaaaaahhhhhh" whilst thumping yourself hard on the chest. Hmmm. I leaned over the side of the bed to see what was wrong, and I find two things: One, Buds is pinned against the side of the bed, with a look combined of alarm, annoyance and confusion on his pointed face. And two, the reason for all this is that Gumby - no doubt led by instinct - has his head tucked deep in Buddy's flank, butting vigorously in a search for food. What he was sucking on, I don't want to know.
Ack! Poor Buds. The book goes flying as I launch myself off the bed to Buddy's rescue. Gumby is in no danger, as the expression on Buddy's face is a lot closer to his "Panic/help me!" face than it is to a "Knock that off or I'll bite you, you brat!" face, but Buddy is approaching the melt-down point. I wonder in passing how long Gumby has been trying to nurse off him, and what indignities he may have inflicted on Buddy's person in the pursuit thereof. I scoop Gumby up and trot downstairs to make him a bottle. Buddy, mightily relieved, jumps up onto the refuge of the bed and curls up there, his head protectively over his flank and a weather eye on Diaper Boy.
Unfortunately for Buddy (not to mention my legs), not long after mastering the jump-on-couch maneuver, Gumby began attempting the same trick on my bed. The bed is quite high, and the first time he attempted it, Gumby hit the side of the bed and fell, landing pathetically on his little back, bleating with dismay. That was very sad, and I tried not to let Gumby make the attempt.... but the nature of life is that sooner or later something distracts you, and also that you can't be everywhere at once. It wasn't long before Gumby had judged his distance and learned to spring up onto the bed, with a panache that would have impressed a mountain goat. Thus commenced a short era of bruises on my legs that weren't that easy to explain.
I would, in the normal course of things, already have placed Gumby in an outdoor home, but I was due for a school program at one of the local elementary schools, and the teacher (a client of mine) had specifically requested that I bring Gumby to meet the second-graders. In the interest of keeping him as comfortable and pliable around people as possible, I let him continue to live as an indoor-outdoor lamb. Truth to tell, he was an excellent gardening companion, happily mowing down my dandelions - which are legion - but ignoring the tender leaves of my tomato plants. He would placidly follow me anywhere I cared to go, and if I should see a stray dog heading down the road in our direction, he would come when asked to and could be quickly stashed in the house. He was getting a bit heavy to be picked up, but it was still an option in those days. He would readily hop into the truck for a ride, and he had, at last, graduated from diapers (having finally mastered the knack of producing a normal stool). To some degree sheep have latrine areas, so he was even somewhat housebroken.
Eventually a day came when it was time to take Gumby to the rescue farm, where he could live in the sunny outdoors and enjoy the company of other sheep. The day I took him there, the owner's 12-year-old son asked me why I was giving Gumby to them.
"Because he's a sheep, sweetie, and sheep need to live in groups. He needs to live like a sheep and have sheep friends, and all I have is a bunch of dogs for him to play with. "
"But... he loves you," the boy said. Just like that, strait to the heart of the matter, all other considerations unimportant.
Twelve year old boys. They'll break you heart.
"He does," I allow, "and I love him, too. But I think he'll be happier in the long run, being a sheep. Besides, this is a good place to live, and I can come visit him, right?"
Gumby never did forget me, nor lose his love of people. At first he tended to hang around nearer the dog pen than the other sheep - dogs, after all, were what he was most used to - but after a while it dawned on him that he really had more in common with the other sheep. He gradually relaxed into life as part of a flock, although the moment I appeared on the scene he would detach himself from the group and come trotting over so I could scratch his favorite spot under his chin, and oh, by the way, did I have anything for him to eat? His days of scrawny, hunch-backed apathy were long behind him, and he grew into a robust, solid Shetland, thickly padded with fine silky wool. As he matured to adulthood his wool went silver, as is often the case with the black lambs, but his face has stayed the same.
And so has his sweet Shetland heart.
On Saturdays, the clinic closes at two, and it's a lovely thing, on a tender, warm spring afternoon, to come home from work, feed your lamb, and then maybe lay on your bed and have a little read whilst the dogs and cats and diapered lamb all meander peacefully about your room. One such afternoon, I was laying head-to foot on my bed, my feet propped up on my pillows and the rest of me propped up on my elbows, belly-down and enjoying a good mystery story. My bedroom has one wall composed almost entirely of a sliding glass door (leading out onto a balcony and a spectacular view of the lake and the Chugach mountains). For the sake of privacy, but in service of letting in as much light as possible, I have a set of sheers hanging there. On pretty days, they let in abundant light and a somewhat misty version of my view, and the fabric of the sheers seems in some way to capture and magnify the light, so that there's a soft extra glow to them.
On this particular afternoon, I fell asleep over my book. I wake up a little while later, my face turned toward the light, and I think, in a dreamy, luxurious sort of way, how pleasant it is to have a little mid-day nap, and how pretty the light is coming in through the curtains, and how adorable and striking it is to see little black Gumby-goo silhouetted against the glowing white backdrop....
A tiny frown forms on my brow. What is it about Gumby's posture that is catching my eye? He's just standing there... but oh, crap, his back is hunched in the urination posture. I bolt up, preparing to snatch him up and shunt him, still peeing, out onto the easily-washed balcony - and then I realize: He's urinating directly into my shoe. I think: Which is easier, shampooing the carpet and washing the deck, or taking the liner out of my shoe and tossing it in the laundry? I subside, a wryly amused little smile taking hold of me as I watch Gumby finish urinating blissfully into my cross-trainer. Done with his task, he looks at me, essays a little bleat of contentment, and begins chewing meditatively on the curtain. Oh, well. I was going to replace those anyway.
At the time I had Gumby, I also had (amongst others) a dog named Buddy. Buddy was meant to be a Border collie, but he was (as the BF, from whom I inherited Buddy, liked to say) more of a BorderLINE collie. Buddy was strange and delightful and so not what a working dog is bred to be, but I loved him with all my heart - more because of his strangeness than in spite of it, to tell the truth. Buds was never in life going to approximate anything even remotely resembling a stockdog, but he was, bless his pointed little heart, perfectly content to share his world with an increasingly-bratty diaper-wearing lamb. Buddy was tall and narrow, built like a sight-hound, with a deep, deep chest and a tiny little wasp-waist, lean ropey arms and thighs fat with muscle. He was a tri-color merle, with long silky feathers disguising his race-car build, and chocolate eyes capable of the sultriest glance this side of Savannah. He was shy and coy and when stressed would panic to the mental shut-down point, where he simply ran out of thought about what to do next, and could only try to run away from it. But he was kind-hearted and gentle, and possessed of a silliness and joy of being that were irresistible. He was a charming dog, strange and unique, and I suppose (with him four years in his grave) that I will miss him forever.
One afternoon, not long after Gumby christened my shoe, I was again lounging head-to-foot on my bed with a book. Buddy, standing bedside, began to essay his peculiar high, scribbly growl.
"Knock it off, Buddy," I said, mildly, figuring he was defending his spot against encroaching dogs. But Buddy's growl ratcheted up a notch in pitch and volume, and began to take on an odd hitching effect, like if you went "Aaaaaaahhhhhh" whilst thumping yourself hard on the chest. Hmmm. I leaned over the side of the bed to see what was wrong, and I find two things: One, Buds is pinned against the side of the bed, with a look combined of alarm, annoyance and confusion on his pointed face. And two, the reason for all this is that Gumby - no doubt led by instinct - has his head tucked deep in Buddy's flank, butting vigorously in a search for food. What he was sucking on, I don't want to know.
Ack! Poor Buds. The book goes flying as I launch myself off the bed to Buddy's rescue. Gumby is in no danger, as the expression on Buddy's face is a lot closer to his "Panic/help me!" face than it is to a "Knock that off or I'll bite you, you brat!" face, but Buddy is approaching the melt-down point. I wonder in passing how long Gumby has been trying to nurse off him, and what indignities he may have inflicted on Buddy's person in the pursuit thereof. I scoop Gumby up and trot downstairs to make him a bottle. Buddy, mightily relieved, jumps up onto the refuge of the bed and curls up there, his head protectively over his flank and a weather eye on Diaper Boy.
Unfortunately for Buddy (not to mention my legs), not long after mastering the jump-on-couch maneuver, Gumby began attempting the same trick on my bed. The bed is quite high, and the first time he attempted it, Gumby hit the side of the bed and fell, landing pathetically on his little back, bleating with dismay. That was very sad, and I tried not to let Gumby make the attempt.... but the nature of life is that sooner or later something distracts you, and also that you can't be everywhere at once. It wasn't long before Gumby had judged his distance and learned to spring up onto the bed, with a panache that would have impressed a mountain goat. Thus commenced a short era of bruises on my legs that weren't that easy to explain.
I would, in the normal course of things, already have placed Gumby in an outdoor home, but I was due for a school program at one of the local elementary schools, and the teacher (a client of mine) had specifically requested that I bring Gumby to meet the second-graders. In the interest of keeping him as comfortable and pliable around people as possible, I let him continue to live as an indoor-outdoor lamb. Truth to tell, he was an excellent gardening companion, happily mowing down my dandelions - which are legion - but ignoring the tender leaves of my tomato plants. He would placidly follow me anywhere I cared to go, and if I should see a stray dog heading down the road in our direction, he would come when asked to and could be quickly stashed in the house. He was getting a bit heavy to be picked up, but it was still an option in those days. He would readily hop into the truck for a ride, and he had, at last, graduated from diapers (having finally mastered the knack of producing a normal stool). To some degree sheep have latrine areas, so he was even somewhat housebroken.
Eventually a day came when it was time to take Gumby to the rescue farm, where he could live in the sunny outdoors and enjoy the company of other sheep. The day I took him there, the owner's 12-year-old son asked me why I was giving Gumby to them.
"Because he's a sheep, sweetie, and sheep need to live in groups. He needs to live like a sheep and have sheep friends, and all I have is a bunch of dogs for him to play with. "
"But... he loves you," the boy said. Just like that, strait to the heart of the matter, all other considerations unimportant.
Twelve year old boys. They'll break you heart.
"He does," I allow, "and I love him, too. But I think he'll be happier in the long run, being a sheep. Besides, this is a good place to live, and I can come visit him, right?"
Gumby never did forget me, nor lose his love of people. At first he tended to hang around nearer the dog pen than the other sheep - dogs, after all, were what he was most used to - but after a while it dawned on him that he really had more in common with the other sheep. He gradually relaxed into life as part of a flock, although the moment I appeared on the scene he would detach himself from the group and come trotting over so I could scratch his favorite spot under his chin, and oh, by the way, did I have anything for him to eat? His days of scrawny, hunch-backed apathy were long behind him, and he grew into a robust, solid Shetland, thickly padded with fine silky wool. As he matured to adulthood his wool went silver, as is often the case with the black lambs, but his face has stayed the same.
And so has his sweet Shetland heart.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I'm Gumby, Damnit!
As you know, I have sheep. Just a few, and recently acquired, but they aren't my first ones. When I was a kid (about 7 or 8 years old to begin with) we did 4-H. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I decided to rear orphan lambs as my 4-H project. I discovered two things from this experience: One, I hated keeping records about food intake, rate of growth, feeding times, etc. Two, I loved taking care of the lambs.
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I am living in Alaska and working as a small animal vet. My neighbor S, from Wildwood, calls me up.
"We have an orphan lamb that needs bottle rearing," she tells me.
"Oh, okay; what you want to do is [blah blah blah, me outlining my strategies for the successful rearing of bottle lambs]."
There is a pause. "Well, actually," S says, "I was hoping you'd just do it for me."
Another pause. Hmm. "Okay," I say, cheerfully. I love bottle lambs, and no one will be bugging me about meticulous record-keeping. This will be fun.
The first lamb I reared for them was called Pete (adapted from P.T., for Pepper's Toy, since Pepper's stockdog instincts kicked in immediately and she was riveted to Pete's every movement, seeming to believe I had gotten him solely for her slinking-and-watching pleasure. Pete, I will say, did not seem displeased by this arrangement, regarding Pepper as both buffer against the other dogs, and big-sister shadow.) Pete I placed with another sheep-rearing family in the area, on the understanding that they would not slaughter him. Though I can and do eat lamb - with great enjoyment, I might add - I think it's unfair to eat the bottle babies. They're a lot more like pets than livestock. (Unfortunately, that agreement was not kept, and the new owners did in fact slaughter and eat Pete about a year later, much to my anger and outrage.)
Gumby, on the other hand, got his name by a quirk of memory. I was sitting at work one day with him sprawled on my lap - his long, cunning legs dangling on either side, his woolly head resting soporifically on my arm - and the name "Gumby" popped into my head. It took me a minute, but I remembered that an old friend had been in the habit of referring to girls with long, sexy legs as having "Gumby legs" (don't ask me - it must be a guy thing.) Well, hardly anything is proportionally more leg than newborn lambs are, so Gumby it was.
Pete was a sturdy wee thing, and only needed a little help to get on the right track. He was a well, healthy lamb within a week or so, at which time I moved him from the bathroom nursery (a bathtub lined with a plastic shower curtain and filled with straw makes a dandy lamb incubator) to the back yard, where he lived in the dog run and slept (adorably) in one of the straw-filled dog houses. He went to work with me during the day, so I could keep him fed, and before long he was transitioning first to dandelion flowers, then to grass and hay.
Gumby, my second go-round for Wildwood, was another matter.
Gumby was much sicker than Pete had been, for starters. Small, weak, disinterested in nursing, I had real fears for his survival the first three weeks of his life. I had to put the nipple of his bottle between his lips and squeeze the sides of it to run some milk replacer into his mouth. He would swallow unenthusiastically for a few moments, and then, exhausted, quit. With patience and persistence, I might ultimately get a tablespoon or two into him at a feeding. I transitioned him to raw goat's milk (obtained from a local goat dairyman) in hopes that the trace minerals and proteins would perk him up a little. In desperation, I made a crib for him by lining a laundry basket first with a large plastic trash bag, then with a nest of towels and blankets. Into the crib went Gumby, and onto my bed went the crib. I discovered that I could quite easily keep a night's worth of milk warm in its bottle by tucking it under my arm while I slept, and that without prompting from the alarm clock I would roll over every two hours all night long, tilt the crib over, poke the nipple into Gumby's uninterested mouth, coax him to drink a little bit, and then go back to sleep. This was much easier than getting up and traipsing to the bathroom every two hours, because by the time you're done with that, you're all the way awake and you can't get back to sleep as fast. The tilt-the-crib thing allowed me to get sufficient sleep and give Gumby sufficient care that after a few weeks he was starting to struggle up from his spindly beginnings and show some inclination toward survival. (The drawback o this method is, of course, that you have a sheep sleeping in your bed, which is one of those things that you REALLY don't want people to know about you, most especially if you are a vet. Except that now everyone knows, because I wrote this. What was I thinking?)
Gumby was in diapers for a long time. He had black and green slimy diarrhea at first, which was only partly contained by diapering (as I discovered on more than one 2-a.m. occasion, groping with a sleepy hand into his little crib. Urk, what's that? Oh, eeeugh. ) Because he was far too frail to transition to the outdoors, he lived in the house, toted everywhere in his little diapers by me. Unfortunately, male lambs urinate sort of mid-belly, so the diapers did nothing to control his urination messes (and the several attempts I made to jury-rig an absorbent belly-band were only partially successful.) Fortunately, very young animals have very dilute watery urine, and I am in possession of a carpet steam-cleaner, so this was a manageable complaint.
After he finally started to get well, Gumby turned out to have more personality than any other lamb I've ever reared. For one thing, he had a bit of an oral fixation. This ranged from being a potentially dangerous problem to a mere annoyance. Merely annoying was when I woke up after a pleasant afternoon nap to feel someone tugging gently on a hank of my hair - only to discover that it was Gumby, quietly gnawing a piece of it off. Potentially dangerous was when I got out of my morning shower to discover him standing blithely in the middle of my dining room table - where I did not imagine he would be able to go - happily chowing down on a length of green satin ribbon. I dropped my towel and grabbed the ribbon, reeling in approximately two and a half feet of its wet, slimy, tooth-punctured length from out of Gumby's gullet. Gumby looked both bemused by this (no doubt an odd sensation, me pulling that back out of his guts) and a bit annoyed (he didn't go to all the trouble of discovering a path to the Hidden Land of Tabletop, not to mention figuring out how to pluck the ribbon reel out of the mending basket AND finding the elusive ribbon end, just to have me steal back his prize.) However, he was a cheerful little creature, if a bit like living with a developmentally delayed raccoon, and he quickly forgot his disappointment.
This, however, was the first clue that things were changing in Gumbyland. Gumby - who heretofore had been too small to get up on the furniture, and who was by consequence limited in the amount of mayhem he could cause - had at last grown strong enough to make it up onto the couch. This trick he demonstrated memorably one cloudy afternoon when I was sitting on my couch, drinking a mug of tea and reading a book. So there I was, engrossed in my book and generally minding my own biz and enjoying a peaceful afternoon, when all of a sudden four sharp, pointy cloven hooves land forcefully on my thighs, as Gumby has just leaped off the floor and strait onto my lap. Tea goes flying one way and my book goes flying the other. All the dogs leap to their feet in alarm. Gumby looks mildly surprised at the commotion - although much more surprised to be evicted unceremoniously from my lap. Undaunted, he hops right back up on the couch, although this time (as he didn't leap onto my lap) I consented to allow him to snuggle down on the couch next to me and have a nap (after I retrieved my fallen tea mug and book.) It's a pleasant thing to have a dog or a cat curl up, napping, against your leg while you have a bit of a read. It's no less pleasant - though admittedly slightly surreal - to have a two month old lamb do so.
Still.... this was the first sign that Gumby was one day soon going to be too big - and too much a sheep - to live in the house. For the moment my diaper-rigging was working (and still necessary), but that wasn't going to last forever, and realistically: Gumby is a sheep. He needs to live outdoors. Right about then it became apparent that he was one day going to be strong enough to do so.
There are other Gumby stories aplenty, but those will wait for another day. But lest you be worried that Gumby met Pete's fate, he did not. He lived for a while on a rescue farm, and then became the pet of a woman who has one of the few remaining in-town acreages in Anchorage. He is their ambassador sheep, trotting out to greet visitors, following people around the farm as they do chores or tour the place, standing with his little cloven feet braced against the log sides of their cabin, poking his nose in the window on fine days to get a bit of toast and jam. They called me after they'd had him for a year to tell me how much they adore him - how much everyone adores him, come to that.
I'm telling you. All personality, all the time. He's Gumby, damnit!
Fast forward to a few years ago, when I am living in Alaska and working as a small animal vet. My neighbor S, from Wildwood, calls me up.
"We have an orphan lamb that needs bottle rearing," she tells me.
"Oh, okay; what you want to do is [blah blah blah, me outlining my strategies for the successful rearing of bottle lambs]."
There is a pause. "Well, actually," S says, "I was hoping you'd just do it for me."
Another pause. Hmm. "Okay," I say, cheerfully. I love bottle lambs, and no one will be bugging me about meticulous record-keeping. This will be fun.
The first lamb I reared for them was called Pete (adapted from P.T., for Pepper's Toy, since Pepper's stockdog instincts kicked in immediately and she was riveted to Pete's every movement, seeming to believe I had gotten him solely for her slinking-and-watching pleasure. Pete, I will say, did not seem displeased by this arrangement, regarding Pepper as both buffer against the other dogs, and big-sister shadow.) Pete I placed with another sheep-rearing family in the area, on the understanding that they would not slaughter him. Though I can and do eat lamb - with great enjoyment, I might add - I think it's unfair to eat the bottle babies. They're a lot more like pets than livestock. (Unfortunately, that agreement was not kept, and the new owners did in fact slaughter and eat Pete about a year later, much to my anger and outrage.)
Gumby, on the other hand, got his name by a quirk of memory. I was sitting at work one day with him sprawled on my lap - his long, cunning legs dangling on either side, his woolly head resting soporifically on my arm - and the name "Gumby" popped into my head. It took me a minute, but I remembered that an old friend had been in the habit of referring to girls with long, sexy legs as having "Gumby legs" (don't ask me - it must be a guy thing.) Well, hardly anything is proportionally more leg than newborn lambs are, so Gumby it was.
Pete was a sturdy wee thing, and only needed a little help to get on the right track. He was a well, healthy lamb within a week or so, at which time I moved him from the bathroom nursery (a bathtub lined with a plastic shower curtain and filled with straw makes a dandy lamb incubator) to the back yard, where he lived in the dog run and slept (adorably) in one of the straw-filled dog houses. He went to work with me during the day, so I could keep him fed, and before long he was transitioning first to dandelion flowers, then to grass and hay.
Gumby, my second go-round for Wildwood, was another matter.
Gumby was much sicker than Pete had been, for starters. Small, weak, disinterested in nursing, I had real fears for his survival the first three weeks of his life. I had to put the nipple of his bottle between his lips and squeeze the sides of it to run some milk replacer into his mouth. He would swallow unenthusiastically for a few moments, and then, exhausted, quit. With patience and persistence, I might ultimately get a tablespoon or two into him at a feeding. I transitioned him to raw goat's milk (obtained from a local goat dairyman) in hopes that the trace minerals and proteins would perk him up a little. In desperation, I made a crib for him by lining a laundry basket first with a large plastic trash bag, then with a nest of towels and blankets. Into the crib went Gumby, and onto my bed went the crib. I discovered that I could quite easily keep a night's worth of milk warm in its bottle by tucking it under my arm while I slept, and that without prompting from the alarm clock I would roll over every two hours all night long, tilt the crib over, poke the nipple into Gumby's uninterested mouth, coax him to drink a little bit, and then go back to sleep. This was much easier than getting up and traipsing to the bathroom every two hours, because by the time you're done with that, you're all the way awake and you can't get back to sleep as fast. The tilt-the-crib thing allowed me to get sufficient sleep and give Gumby sufficient care that after a few weeks he was starting to struggle up from his spindly beginnings and show some inclination toward survival. (The drawback o this method is, of course, that you have a sheep sleeping in your bed, which is one of those things that you REALLY don't want people to know about you, most especially if you are a vet. Except that now everyone knows, because I wrote this. What was I thinking?)
Gumby was in diapers for a long time. He had black and green slimy diarrhea at first, which was only partly contained by diapering (as I discovered on more than one 2-a.m. occasion, groping with a sleepy hand into his little crib. Urk, what's that? Oh, eeeugh. ) Because he was far too frail to transition to the outdoors, he lived in the house, toted everywhere in his little diapers by me. Unfortunately, male lambs urinate sort of mid-belly, so the diapers did nothing to control his urination messes (and the several attempts I made to jury-rig an absorbent belly-band were only partially successful.) Fortunately, very young animals have very dilute watery urine, and I am in possession of a carpet steam-cleaner, so this was a manageable complaint.
After he finally started to get well, Gumby turned out to have more personality than any other lamb I've ever reared. For one thing, he had a bit of an oral fixation. This ranged from being a potentially dangerous problem to a mere annoyance. Merely annoying was when I woke up after a pleasant afternoon nap to feel someone tugging gently on a hank of my hair - only to discover that it was Gumby, quietly gnawing a piece of it off. Potentially dangerous was when I got out of my morning shower to discover him standing blithely in the middle of my dining room table - where I did not imagine he would be able to go - happily chowing down on a length of green satin ribbon. I dropped my towel and grabbed the ribbon, reeling in approximately two and a half feet of its wet, slimy, tooth-punctured length from out of Gumby's gullet. Gumby looked both bemused by this (no doubt an odd sensation, me pulling that back out of his guts) and a bit annoyed (he didn't go to all the trouble of discovering a path to the Hidden Land of Tabletop, not to mention figuring out how to pluck the ribbon reel out of the mending basket AND finding the elusive ribbon end, just to have me steal back his prize.) However, he was a cheerful little creature, if a bit like living with a developmentally delayed raccoon, and he quickly forgot his disappointment.
This, however, was the first clue that things were changing in Gumbyland. Gumby - who heretofore had been too small to get up on the furniture, and who was by consequence limited in the amount of mayhem he could cause - had at last grown strong enough to make it up onto the couch. This trick he demonstrated memorably one cloudy afternoon when I was sitting on my couch, drinking a mug of tea and reading a book. So there I was, engrossed in my book and generally minding my own biz and enjoying a peaceful afternoon, when all of a sudden four sharp, pointy cloven hooves land forcefully on my thighs, as Gumby has just leaped off the floor and strait onto my lap. Tea goes flying one way and my book goes flying the other. All the dogs leap to their feet in alarm. Gumby looks mildly surprised at the commotion - although much more surprised to be evicted unceremoniously from my lap. Undaunted, he hops right back up on the couch, although this time (as he didn't leap onto my lap) I consented to allow him to snuggle down on the couch next to me and have a nap (after I retrieved my fallen tea mug and book.) It's a pleasant thing to have a dog or a cat curl up, napping, against your leg while you have a bit of a read. It's no less pleasant - though admittedly slightly surreal - to have a two month old lamb do so.
Still.... this was the first sign that Gumby was one day soon going to be too big - and too much a sheep - to live in the house. For the moment my diaper-rigging was working (and still necessary), but that wasn't going to last forever, and realistically: Gumby is a sheep. He needs to live outdoors. Right about then it became apparent that he was one day going to be strong enough to do so.
There are other Gumby stories aplenty, but those will wait for another day. But lest you be worried that Gumby met Pete's fate, he did not. He lived for a while on a rescue farm, and then became the pet of a woman who has one of the few remaining in-town acreages in Anchorage. He is their ambassador sheep, trotting out to greet visitors, following people around the farm as they do chores or tour the place, standing with his little cloven feet braced against the log sides of their cabin, poking his nose in the window on fine days to get a bit of toast and jam. They called me after they'd had him for a year to tell me how much they adore him - how much everyone adores him, come to that.
I'm telling you. All personality, all the time. He's Gumby, damnit!
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