Leg of Lamb

What a morning I had . . . not quite as perfect as yesterday’s.

At 6am, I opened the French doors of the kitchen to greet the glorious day. Fed the dog and let the chickens out. While I was walking back to the house, Blanche surprised me by yelling at me.

For the past week, the sheep haven’t been coming around for grain. There’s just too much good stuff to eat out in the walnut grove. In fact, they aren’t coming near the house, so I’m required to check on them a couple times of day to see if any have escaped.

I wasn’t going to feed them this morning, because they don’t need it and I don’t have much left. Besides, I wanted to get going on a long walk with Attila. But, Blanche was persistent and they were all looking at me so cute and hopeful that I couldn’t refuse them.

I fed them and stayed around to admire them. I noticed that the buck, Napoleon, was holding his right front leg in a strange manner reminiscent of his namesake . . . if only his wool vest had an opening in it. I don’t know much about sheep, but I knew that a limp-wristed buck is a problem.

I climbed over the fence and grabbed him. Examining his leg, there was no doubt it was broken below the knee. I raced into the house and called my husband who was still awake in the States. He suggested I contact a doctor friend, but I didn’t want to call him at 11pm his time so I sent an e-mail. I searched Google, but couldn’t find any information on whether a broken lamb leg can be fixed. At one point in our conversation, I thought I would cry.

My husband wished me good luck and retired to bed.

I shredded up an old towel. Cut two splints. But when I tried to set Napoleon’s leg, I realized that it would be impossible for me to do it correctly . . . since I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. By this time, the lamb’s leg was extremely swollen.

Growing up on a farm and ranch I had never heard of anyone putting a cast on a sheep or a cow . . . or an expensive horse for that matter. Napoleon was able to walk so I thought about just letting him recover on his own, to be a cripple for the rest of his life. After all, his only future chore was to impregnate the ewes and I figured he could easily do that with his hind legs and one front leg in tact.

But then I worried that he would get a horrible infection and die from that. After Olympia’s gruesome, drawn out starvation death, I didn’t want to do the sheep hospice thing again.

Figuring it was better to sacrifice him now, while he would still be edible, not futilely shot up with antibiotics, I called my British friend who always tells me how much he likes mutton. He wasn’t interested in the four-month-old lamb, but he said he’d call around for me.

The housekeeper arrived, and I asked her if she knew anyone who would like to butcher and eat a lamb . . .yes, he did. I asked her to call the man. As she sat down to dial the telephone, she offered to call the vet to see if anything could be done.

Unbelievably, the vet said to bring Napoleon in, since from the housekeeper’s description, it sounded to him as if the break could be easily fixed with a cast.

I went across the road and grabbed Roger out of his vineyard. He drove his Deux Chevaux over. I carried Napoleon out of the pasture and Roger and I put him in the truck. I followed behind Roger, smiling at how cute the sheep was looking out of the back window of the Deux Chevaux.

As luck would have it, the handsome vet was assigned to our case. I sat in the examining room with the sheep across my lap. I was wearing shorts. The vet was in a side room making preparations. Napoleon’s was upright. I had his stomach balanced across my two legs. Embarrassingly, he developed an enormous erection that pressed up against my leg. In polite French-fashion, both Roger and I ignored the phenomenon and gallantly made awkward small talk.

The erection persisted until the vet finally arrived and gave Napoleon a shot to sedate him. We lifted Napoleon up onto the operating table, and the vet stretched Napoleon out and tied him up. The vet is very adept at tying knots. As he was tying one of the ropes to a hook in the wall, I asked him if he had read the writings of his fellow Frenchman the Marquis de Sade. “Why, because I can tie knots?” he asked, laughing softly. Roger laughed. I like it when I can make a joke that the French understand.

Napoleon is now in the barn. He’s to be kept isolated for a while so he doesn’t run around. He gets his cast off in a month.

Today’s lesson in living: all of us are alive only because of the kindness of others. So if you get fed up with the world, and its injustice, remember that life itself is an affirmation that there is much more good than evil in the world. (Can’t believe I came to that conclusion!!!)