animal stories Read Free Page B

“but sudden exertion and stress can bring it on.”
    “Well ah never knew that,” panted Rob. “How does it happen?”
    I saved my breath. I wasn’t going to start an exposition on the effects of sudden derangement of the parathyroid. I was more concerned with wondering if I had enough calcium in the trunk for fifty ewes. It was reassuring to see the long row of round tin caps peeping from their cardboard box; I must have filled up recently.
    I injected the first ewe in the vein just to check my diagnosis—calcium works as quickly as that in sheep, and felt a quiet elation as the unconscious animal began to blink and tremble, then tried to struggle onto its chest.
    “We’ll inject the others under the skin,” I said. “It’ll save time.”
    I began to work my way up the field. Rob pulled forward the fore leg of each sheep so that I could insert the needle under the convenient patch of unwoolled skin just behind the elbow, and by the time I was halfway up the slope the ones at the bottom were walking about and getting their heads into the food troughs and hayracks.
    It was one of the most satisfying experiences of my working life. Not clever, but a magical transfiguration; from despair to hope, from death to life within minutes.
    I was throwing the empty bottles into the trunk when Rob spoke. He was looking wonderingly up at the last of the ewes getting to its feet at the far end of the field.
    “Well Jim, I’ll tell you. I’ve never seen owt like that afore. But there’s one thing bothers me.” He turned to me and his weathered features screwed up in puzzlement. “Ah can understand how gettin’ chased by a dog could affect some of them ewes, but why should the whole bloody lot go down?”
    “Rob,” I said. “I don’t know.”
    And, thirty years later, I still wonder. I still don’t know why the whole bloody lot went down.
    I thought Rob had enough to worry about at the time, so I didn’t point out to him that other complications could be expected after the Alsatian episode. I wasn’t surprised when I had a call to the Benson farm within days.
    I met him again on the hillside with the same wind whipping over the straw bale pens. The lambs had been arriving in a torrent and the noise was louder than ever. He led me to my patient.
    “There’s one with a bellyful of dead lambs, I reckon,” he said, pointing to a ewe with her head drooping, ribs heaving. She stood quite motionless and made no attempt to move away when I went up to her; this one was really sick and as the stink of decomposition came up to me I knew the farmer’s diagnosis was right.
    “Well I suppose it had to happen to one at least after that chasing round,” I said. “Let’s see what we can do, anyway.”
    This kind of lambing is without charm but it has to be done to save the ewe. I delivered the little bodies with least discomfort to the mother. When I had finished, the ewe’s head was almost touching the ground; she was panting rapidly and grating her teeth. I had nothing to offer her—no wriggling new creature for her to lick and revive her interest in life. What she needed was an injection of penicillin, but this was 1939 and the antibiotics were still a little way round the corner.
    “Well I wouldn’t give much for her,” Rob grunted. “Is there owt more you can do?”
    “Oh, I’ll give her an injection, but what she needs most is a lamb to look after. You know as well as I do that ewes in this condition usually give up if they’ve nothing to occupy them. You haven’t a spare lamb to put on her, have you?”
    “Not right now, I haven’t. And it’s now she needs it. Tm’ll be too late.”
    Just at that moment a familiar figure wandered into view. It was Herbert, the unwanted lamb, easily recognizable as he prowled from sheep to sheep in search of nourishment.
    “Hey, do you think she’d take that little chap?” I asked the farmer.
    He looked doubtful. “Well I don’t know; he’s a bit old. Nearly a