I’ve long said that it doesn’t matter how many children you have, they somehow manage to require the same amount of time and energy to parent — which is to say exactly as much as you have to give plus a little bit more.
It is the same with me and bottle lambs, apparently. So far this year, I have had three: Little Bobby, whose mom decided she didn’t want him, and Huckleberry Pie, the smallest lamb I’ve ever seen.
The third bottle lamb (who was the tiniest lamb I’d ever seen until I met Huckleberry) had a tough start. He was too weak to nurse, so I’d brought him inside. My daughter took one look at him and started making an elaborate pen with her own baby blanket and a fuzzy pillow from her bed. He spent the afternoon sleeping in her lap while she read him books.
I’ve had enough bottle lambs to know the signs, and I warned my daughter he might not be with us long. Unlike me, she’s grown up with the sometimes harsh realities of ranch life. A few days later, when I told her he’d died while she was at school, she accepted the news with equanimity. She just sighed and said, “Well, at least we still have Huckleberry Pie.”
Huckleberry Pie, though tiny, is thankfully the very picture of health. He is significantly smaller than our house cats, but his spindly legs more than suffice for carrying him across the yard at top speeds to greet us. He is mostly brown with a shock of white, tufting wool on the top of his narrow head, giving him the look of a wizened professor, and I am not exaggerating when I say his hooves are barely bigger than my thumb nail.
With only two bottle lambs now, one of whom has a tiny, tiny belly, I make one bottle at a time. I let Huckleberry Pie drink first, and then Little Bobby drinks the rest. The lambs get their last bottle pretty late at night when I am usually half in dreamland, having already fallen asleep in one of the kids’ beds while I was supposed to be tucking them in. Thankfully, I put solar-powered twinkle lights in the barn last summer, and the stalls filled with fresh, sweet straw, are the coziest place you can imagine, which does somehow soften the weight of my exhaustion.
Last night, yawning and trying to keep my eyes open, I started feeding Huckleberry his bottle in the dim, golden light, while Little Bobby not-so-patiently waited for his turn. It seemed like mere seconds had passed — so maybe I actually fell asleep on my feet — when I looked down and realized Huckleberry had drunk almost half the bottle already. I was horrified. Overfeeding can quickly lead to bloat, the leading cause of death in bottle lambs. Huckleberry’s round belly made it clear I’d just put him in danger.
What choice did I have but to bring him inside and watch him for the next few hours to make sure he didn’t need emergency care? I’m sure you can imagine how much I did NOT want to do this, but the thought of telling my daughter about another dead lamb — this one a result of my own carelessness — was worse.
So, he and I lay down on the floor in the den together. After about an hour, he stretched his tiny head across my face, and I fell asleep, hoping that if he started to have trouble breathing (the usual cause of death with bloat), I’d be able to feel it. When I woke up, he was skinny again and ready to go back to the barn.
Today I am bone weary, and maybe questioning my life decisions a little bit. But you know what? When I am done lambing, I won’t be exhausted anymore. The memory of these long days and longer nights will fade to a sepia glow, like the twinkle lights of my barn. But I will carry the sense memory of Huckleberry’s soft cheek nestled against mine, the sound of his gentle breath against my ear reassuring me. These little ones take all I have, plus a little more, but it’s worth it.
