The Spring Lamb

My mother claims that she descends from a long line of Hungarian gypsies who are psychic. Most Americans I know who are of European descent like to regale their children and patient acquaintances with tales of noble blood running through their veins. But my family doesn’t nurture aristocratic rumors. On my mother’s side we’re gypsies and mercenaries. On my father’s side we’re bootleggers.

I often get premonitions. But I never understand they are premonitions until after the fact – when it’s too late to do anything about the impending future event – usually a disaster of some mild magnitude. During my recent visit with my mother, she insisted I look through her mother’s fortune telling manual. I did. But I didn’t find any useful information on how to profit from my premonitions.

Lately, I’ve been painfully psychic. The latest event happened this morning as I was sitting in a comfortable leather armchair, chatting with my husband over his cup of coffee and my cup of tea.

I glanced out the window, and in the sheep pasture, I saw something white and large enough that I thought it was a baby lamb. The apparition kept walking in and out of the bushes so I would only get inadequate glimpses of it. After several sightings, I finally said to Craig, “That looks like a baby lamb out there.”

He got up but couldn’t see anything. He sat down. The white thing appeared again, and I realized it must be the long-lost cat Cirq, who Craig and I rarely see any more.

About an hour later, when Craig and I had finished talking, I was in the kitchen and heard a sheep bleating. I thought it odd, because usually, the sheep only bleat if they can see me, if they’re within viewing distance of the house. But I couldn’t see any sheep.

I took off my fluffy pink slippers and slipped on my raspberry-colored, rubber garden clogs and went outside to see what was up with the sheep. When I came around the corner, I could see in the distance, a white blob in the field. At first I thought it was a lamb. Then I thought it was a grouping of white flowered weeds that grow throughout the pasture. As I got closer I was sure it was a dead rabbit.

The bleating sheep was far away from the white blob. She was alone. The rest of the flock was merrily munching their way through the pasture.

As I got closer to the white blob, I kept thinking that it was odd for a dead rabbit to be in the pasture, for if a predator killed a rabbit, surely it would have dragged the carcass off to be eaten.

To my horror, I discovered that the blob was a dead lamb.

It had probably been born within the hour, because it wasn’t stiff yet. The blood hadn’t congealed, and the afterbirth was still glistening in the morning sun.

I felt sick to my stomach.

The first-time mother had cleaned off the lamb’s face, and licked the mucus off of its body. She had done everything right, but the large, healthy looking lamb was undeniably dead. It's sad mother was walking around with a swollen udder, approaching me as if to ask for help.

I turned the lamb over to see if it had been attacked by a dog. But it hadn’t.

I went back to the house, and got Craig to pick up the lamb and put it in a garbage bag.

Just yesterday, Therese brought over her brother, a retired sheep farmer, to look at the sheep and tell me if they were pregnant. He told me he couldn’t tell.