The Progeny flew back to Montana on Friday. I always feel down when he leaves.

That evening, I put Blanche and her lamb out in the field with the rest of the flock. I kept the two of them for one night and two days in the barn so that they could bond. The sheep book says to not keep them in the “jug” for more than three days. Marley was nursing well, and I made the decision that they should go back to the flock. They had spent the same amount of time in the barn as Biberon had with her lamb.

Blanche was happy to leave the barn to once again graze on green grass. I checked often to make sure that Blanche was taking good care of Marley. The last time I looked was around ten p.m. and Blanche and Marley were lying down for the night, side by side.

In the morning, I looked out the kitchen window as I made my pot of tea, and saw Blanche near the watering hole; but there was no lamb following her. The other sheep were grazing nearby, but I couldn’t make out Marley’s scrawny form among them.

I heaved a heavy, worried sigh and reluctantly left the kitchen without having a cup of tea.

There was no sign of Marley. I walked all over the two pastures, looking under bushes, over the fence at the river bank, at a mesh-covered hole. No sign of Marley.

I made Antoinette and Attila sit down for a blood inspection. I couldn’t find a trace.

I stirred the Husband from his perusal of the Tokyo market and asked him to go out and look for traces of Marley. The Husband conducted an even more thorough search by walking the entire perimeter of the two pastures. He could find no sign of Marley.

Marley had simply disappeared.

Yesterday evening, Sunday, the Husband and I took Blanche some geraniums to eat. We found her eating the short tufts of grass just outside her shed. The rest of the flock had taken off for their evening round of grazing, she stayed behind. Unusual behavior for a sheep.

When I had checked on her earlier in the day, she was keeping to herself in a separate shed while the rest of the flock banded together in another. Usually the flock wants to be in Blanche’s shed; maybe they were feeling her sad vibes and didn’t want to be around her. Or perhaps she wanted some privacy and was keeping them out.

To me, Blanche looked very sad yesterday. I sat down and petted her. Told her I was sorry she had to go through all this misery: the Dutchman fishing around in her body with his arm; the dead female lamb; the huge, heavy milk bag; and now the missing Marley with whom she nuzzled so sweetly. I cried. She nuzzled my face. I cried harder.


I came in the house and told the Husband I wanted to give all the sheep, except Blanche and Soixante-Douze to the Moulys, the sheep farmers up the road. The Husband told me to hang in there. I quietly resolved to call the Moulys.

I pulled out a copy of “The Barn at the End of the Road.” It’s the journal of the year a Quaker-Buddist woman spent with a flock of sheep in Minnesota. I flipped through it and read all the parts about dead sheep that I could find. There were a lot.

The author said that when sheep die, it is a dress rehearsal for the farmer’s own pending death.

Yeah, I could see how that was true. I had always understood the theoretical aspects of death. My best friend in ninth grade was hit by a car and killed. But that seemed to be her fault. She had run out in the road after her cat.

I’m a smart American; I can thwart the grim reaper. I can exercise. I can eat right. I can get a mammogram each year. I can look both ways before crossing the street.

But I’m still going to die. That’s the message isn’t it?

That’s not quite the entire message. The rest of the message is that the only thing that matters while you’re alive is love; loving; being loved. Blanche nuzzling her progeny, that’s all that mattered in Marley’s short life.

The Husband thinks that an owl or a hawk took Marley, since we can’t find any blood near the fences, or wool stuck to the bottom of the fence where a dog could have dragged him.

On the bright side, if Marley had to die, I’m happy that his body was so thoroughly disposed so I don’t have to call the animal disposal man.