Bummer Lambs

            During lambing season, it wasn’t uncommon to find a lamb chilled and neglected by its mother. This is why I frequented the barn as often as I possibly could during those six or eight weeks in January and February when ewes were giving birth. When this happened, I’d scoop the limp lamb up and bring it into the kitchen where the kids and I would dry it, put it on a hot water bottle and warm it up with a heat lamp.  If I caught it soon enough, it would be up on wobbly legs within an hour and begin to bleat frantically and incessantly for food. I’d give it powdered milk replacer for lambs from the feed store mixed with warm water every four hours from a Rainier Ale bottle with a heavy-duty black rubber lamb nipple fitted over its mouth. I’d do this every four hours for six weeks and, in spite of all the feedings and cleanup, I loved having bummers around. I think what I loved most about it was the silence and the calm. When feeding a bummer, I had to stay present until the job was completed. It was those little twenty minute slices of silence with the bummers that allowed me to listen to the owls rustling overhead in the silo and watch the cats hunt below the feeders. It allowed me to notice the tiny tails wiggling and the eager mouths sucking down the milk. And it allowed me to take time out.