animal stories Read Free Page A

the ewe gave a final strain and the little nose was visible. After that it was easy and I had him on the grass within seconds. The little creature gave a convulsive shake of his head and the farmer wiped him down quickly with straw before pushing him to his mother’s head.
    The ewe bent over him and began to lick his face and neck with little quick darts of her tongue; and she gave the deep chuckle of satisfaction that you hear from a sheep only at this time. The chuckling continued as I produced another pair of lambs from inside her, one of them hind end first and, toweling my arms again, watched her nosing round her triplets delightedly.
    Soon they began to answer her with wavering, high-pitched cries and as I drew my coat thankfully over my cold-reddened arms, lamb number one began to struggle to his knees. He couldn’t quite make it to his feet and kept toppling onto his face but he knew where he was going all right; he was headed for that udder with a singleness of purpose which would soon be satisfied.
    Despite the wind cutting over the straw bales into my face I found myself grinning down at the scene; this was always the best part, the wonder that was always fresh, the miracle you couldn’t explain.
    I heard from Rob Benson again a few days later. It was a Sunday afternoon and his voice was strained, almost panic-stricken.
    “Jim, I’ve had a dog in among me in-lamb ewes. There was some folk up here with a car about dinner-time and my neighbor said they had an Alsatian and it was chasing the sheep all over the field. There’s a hell of a mess—I tell you I’m frightened to look.”
    “I’m on my way.” I dropped the receiver and hurried out to the car. I had a sinking dread of what would be waiting for me; the helpless animals lying with their throats torn, the terrifying lacerations of limbs and abdomen. I had seen it all before. The ones which didn’t have to be slaughtered would need stitching and on the way I made a mental check of the stock of suture silk in the trunk.
    The in-lamb ewes were in a field by the roadside and my heart gave a quick thump as I looked over the wall; arms resting on the rough loose stones, I gazed with sick dismay across the pasture. This was worse than I had feared. The long slope of turf was dotted with prostrate sheep—there must have been about fifty of them, motionless woolly mounds scattered at intervals on the green.
    Rob was standing just inside the gate. He hardly looked at me. Just gestured with his head.
    “Tell me what you think. I daren’t go in there.”
    I left him and began to walk among the stricken creatures, rolling them over, lifting their legs, parting the fleece of their necks to examine them. Some were completely unconscious, others comatose; none of them could stand up. But as I worked my way up the field I felt a growing bewilderment. Finally I called back to the farmer.
    “Rob, come over here. There’s something very strange.”
    “Look,” I said as the farmer approached hesitantly. “There’s not a drop of blood nor a wound anywhere and yet all the sheep are flat out. I can’t understand it.”
    Rob bent over and gently raised a lolling head. “Aye, you’re right. What the ‘ell’s done it, then—”
    At the moment I couldn’t answer him, but a little bell was tinkling far away in the back of my mind. There was something familiar about that ewe the farmer had just handled. She was one of the few able to support herself on her chest and she was lying there, blank-eyed and oblivious of everything; but … that drunken nodding of the head, that watery nasal discharge … I had seen it before. I knelt down and as I put my face close to hers I heard a faint bubbling—almost a rattling—in her breathing. I knew then.
    “It’s calcium deficiency,” I cried and began to gallop down the slope toward the car.
    Rob trotted alongside me. “But what the ‘ell? They get that after lambin’, don’t they?”
    “Yes, usually,” I puffed,