Blackie

I don’t know if she’s a sheep. Her “baaaa” sounds like a goat to me – she looks strange, as if she’s a goat, crossed with a sheep, crossed with a dog, and a deer thrown in the mix; but everyone has been calling her a sheep. The phone calls came on Friday. “There’s a black sheep running with a mastiff dog. Is it yours?” Monsieur Dupuis asked the Husband.

I was strapping on my bike gear when The Husband came outside and told me that I needed to go talk to Monsieur Dupuis.

I sighed heavily. I was in a big hurry to get to town before the bakery closed. Couldn’t it wait? “No, you should see what’s up.”

I rode my bike to Dupuis’, his door was open. I knocked, but he was talking on the telephone. I continued into town.

While I was gone, Corinne called the Husband, “There’s a black sheep running around with a big dog. Is it yours?”

I was certain I knew who the owner of the dog and sheep was: the “hillbilly” that lives up on the hill behind us, next to my good friend Pierre-Yves. The woman has six children with six different men. She has a huge scary Pitbull-like dog that people around here term a Mastiff and she has an Australian cattle dog. The two of them range around our area all day, every day. Antoinette has to be on the pill because of the huge Pitbull/Mastiff male.

The Husband and I met Madame Hillbilly for the first time a few weeks ago, at a restaurant where she cooks. The British waitress, an Amis des Chats woman, asked us if we wanted to take in a six month old puppy. I asked what breed it was and she said it was some sort of Australian dog that was good with sheep. “It’s a purebred?” I asked.

“Well, maybe it’s a mix,” she replied.
“Well, let me know what mix it is,” I said while gulping down my moules.

I thought that would end the discussion of the dog. The waitress left; then quickly returned. “It’s an Australian Cattle Dog and a Mastiff mix,” she reported. “It belongs to our cook.”

Immediately, I knew who the proud parents of the puppy were: the dogs that harass me and the sheep wherever we walk. They’re so nasty that I carry large rocks to ward them off should they come at us. Over the years I’ve learned that they’re more bark than bite, but still they’re nasty and scary when we walk near them. I told the British waitress that, NO! I didn’t want the offspring of those two. All my sheep would be dead within a week.

My refusal didn’t stop the British woman in her quest to place the unwanted dog. “He lives with sheep,” she replied.

“He does?” I asked incredulously. I had never seen sheep at that place, and the woman’s yard was so filled with junk that I couldn’t imagine her being organized enough to raise sheep. (Hell, I’m not organized enough to raise sheep. I didn’t see how a woman with a full-time job, six children, and many different lovers could possibly do it. She’s a veritable Martha Stewart I thought.)

So then the Renaissance Woman herself came out of the kitchen to bring us her phone number and tell us how well the dog gets along with the sheep.

“Where’d you get the sheep I asked?”

“Someone just gave them to me,” she replied. “They’re very little and black.”

I had no intention of looking at her puppy, but to be polite in that passive-aggressive way that is so insincere and so British, I took the phone number she handed me. On the way out of the restaurant, I told the British waitress that she should use her Amis des Chats funds to castrate the cook’s dog. “I’ve told her she needs to do it,” she sighed, “but these French just don’t want to sterilize their animals.”

“Well, he roams all over our area and he’s a nuisance I said. Castrating him would stop that.”

“I know,” she agreed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“I can probably take up a fund with the neighbors to get him castrated,” I said.

“I’ll let her know that.”

As we walked out of the restaurant, the Husband said, “Why is castration your solution to everything?” I smiled broadly and briefly considered running for President of the United States on a castration solves all problems platform.

A week later . . . the British waitress shows up at our house. She was scheduled to drop off two wild kittens that she had sterilized at the vet’s. When she arrived she had some bad news. One of the kittens had died under anesthesia and she thought it would traumatize the surviving kitten too much if it was left in a strange place. So she was going to take it back to the house where she found it. “The woman will have a fit, but I think it’s the best thing to do for the kitten.” I nodded my head in agreement while thinking that she was nuts.

“Oh, I told our cook about your offer of castrating her dog and she got very angry,” the waitress informed me. “She said her dog doesn’t wander. I asked her how she knows that her dog stays home when she’s at work all day and she got angry at me.”

I grimaced. Now the cook at one of my favorite bargain restaurants was mad at me. I certainly couldn’t eat there in the future. Who knows what she’d put in my food.

Another week later . . . yesterday . . . around 6:30 am . . .the Husband and I are sleeping soundly. We hear a loud lamb bleating outside the window. I get up and look outside. (I love hanging out the screen-less windows in my negligee. I feel so French.) “There’s a black lamb outside and the dogs are just laying there, looking at it,” I report back to the Husband as I crawl back in bed.

The Husband, quite curious, got up to see for himself, then spent an hour chasing the lamb around until he was finally able to grab it and throw it in with our sheep.

It’s a girl. Thank goodness . . . I don’t need any more sheep testicles bobbing around the place. She has dreadlocks all over her body, as if she’s been running through the woods picking up burrs. She’s incredibly tiny.

I thought Blanche might nurture her when she stood up in her shed to go over and gently smell the new arrival. But my hopes were dashed when Blanche violently butted Blackie out of the shed. (Blackie might be changed to “Noir” in the future. And why do all my sheep, excepting Soixante-Douze, have names that start with “B?”)

Therese came over to tell us that there was a black sheep in with our sheep. She had called up Madame Moulie to see if it was her sheep and Madame Moulie replied that her phone had been ringing off the wall over the past few days because everyone in the village and the valley was calling to ask her if this errant black sheep was hers.

The Husband stopped on his way to do the bakery run to talk to the man who lives next to the one-lane bridge and has some little black sheep. No, he wasn’t missing a sheep. But he insisted on showing the Husband around his place for the next forty minutes and regaling him with stories of his life in Africa. According to the husband, we’re having the man and his wife over for dinner soon.

The man advised us to call the Gendarmes to report the lost sheep. Then, if anyone reports a missing sheep, they’ll come get it. Otherwise, Blackie is ours. If we don’t report the missing sheep, and the Gendarmes find out after someone reports their sheep missing, then we’ll be arrested for stealing.

About ten-thirty last night, the Husband was in bed, I was up playing cards with my brother and two nieces. The Husband came downstairs and informed me that he couldn’t get to sleep because the dogs were barking and Blackie was bleating loudly and that the two of us needed to go out and see what was happening. Perhaps we could thwart another fox attack.

Blackie is too big for a fox, but to humor the Husband, I went outside with him. We found Blackie in the near corner of the field with Bieberon and Biebette. The three of them were fine . . . eating grass and licking the salt blocks. However, I did note that the other white sheep were not near.

It’s interesting that Bieberon, who was initially ostracized by the white sheep group, has taken Blackie under her wing. The other snobs will eventually come around to accepting Blackie.

I have to call the Gendarmes today. We’ll all be sad if Blackie is taken away from us. Especially the Husband.

Update: Niece number two just ran in to tell me that Blanche picked up Blackie and threw him up in the air and that Beau is chasing him too!