posted on Monday, April 10, 2006 1:31 AM
by
Endie
My Life as a Shepherd
On Sunday, driven by a desire to do some walking in snow, I found myself at the northern edge of the Souther Uplands. Emerging from a wood, I heard a lamb in trouble. Growing up in hill-farming country, especially once you've done a bit of lambing yourself, you learn the difference between an annoyed and mildly hungry lamb looking for its mother, and one that is actually hurt.
And so it was that we found ourselves heading off the hill in a snowstorm, into a force eight nor'easterly, the lamb wrapped in an (otherwise very useful in such conditions) coat to keep it warm. Since, as Douglas Adams would say, stress is such a killer in modern life, I should immediately make it clear that said lamb was successfully returned to a surprisingly grateful and pleasant farmer.
It felt like a very manly thing to do. There is no shortage of very deep-reaching language in our culture about good shepherds, about saving lost lambs, about bringing them back to the fold. You can't help be affected by such things. This is helped, at the time, by the similarities of lambs to kittens and puppies. They are, when in trouble, easily convinced of your bona fides, and with warmth and words it was no time before this one had stopped complaining. Just when I began to worry she was going into shock, she started trying to reach up and lick my face. Fortunately, we reached her early: judging by her temperature she can only have been there for a very short time.
It reminded me of a time some sixteen years ago, when I first helped with lambing. On the way back from the casino (?!) in Aberdeen at about two in the morning, I noticed lights in the fields at West Adamston. just outside Huntly. I knew the farmer here, and went to school with his son. Sure enough, Graham was out there on the hill delivering lambs, and I went up to give him a hand. It is a wonderful feeling: driving a tractor at 3am, dressed in a boiler suit over full black tie (we really just went to the casino to play at being James Bond), a collie up with its paws up on the dashboard on one side of you, and a lamb you just delivered in a cardboard box to the right giving you an unmistakably adoring gaze.