NO WORRIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

NO WORRIES.

SHEEP WITH A PAST. DAIRY FARMER'S ENVY. (By M.E.S.) The cw gathered her twins about her with a. protective air, looked at the intruders with a hauteur not unmixed with coyness and trotted sedately off. In tho sunshine of late spring the hillside, with its strongly-growing grass, had a green and pleasant air, the two .sturdy lambs gambolled around their mother, and the ewe's heavy fleece flopped against her sleek sides as she moved. Altogether a scene of peace and plenty, or so the dairy farmer thought. Ho spoko enviously. "You sheep men have all the luck. Look at that ewe. Those lambs will go off fat from their mother at Christmas time, the ewe will shear you a good eight pounds of wool, and probably give- you another pair of twins next August. A gentleman's iife, I call it. Wool may be low, but at least you have very little work and no worry. How quiet that ewe is! Almost as if she knew you. A born mother, evidently."

The sheep farmer grinned sardonically. He thought of July, August and September, those uiack months in the shepherd's calendar, now happily passed. He thought of long, miserable days in the saddle, of endless riding up and down hill from dawn to chirk, through rain aud sleet and sometimes through snow, of hours spent ill persuading a fickle mother to accept her shivering and halfdead lamb, of long searches through fern-covered gullies and long-strewn hills for missing lambs, of slow rides home at the end of the day, followed by exhausted dogs, so tired that they dropped into their kennels and left their suppers half-eaten until the morning, A Gentleman's Life. Tho sheep farmer thought of all this and glanced moodily at the "born mother"; theu he sat down on a log, deliberately pulled out his pipe and began to talk, his eye still fixed morosely on (he lambs that frisked in the sunshine. "That ewe ought to know me. If she were to cut me now I'd never believe in gratitude again. She'd be turning down her best friend, her deliverer many fimes over. Personally, I'm not likely to forget her; she was ever with me in the winter and through the spring. As for bother—well, I don't know about that. I became so accustomed to picking her up and carrying her on to the front lawn, or laying her tenderly before (lie kitchen grate, that I grew to accept is as part of the day's routine. Yes, she's a credit to my tender care, but had it ceased for twenty-four hours she would now be under the young peach trees in the orchard, and not behaving as if those lambs had been entirely her own idea."

"But surely you'll give her credit for her own lambs?"

"They're not hers, either of them. She's one of thoso natural mothers that won't he bothered with her offspring. Ah, that ewe may look the picture of maternal virtue, but she lias a dart story behind her. She began to make herself felt in June, and the black■berries were her first inspiration. I've a. patch in my back paddock, you know, and, though I cut them every year, '•they're a nuieanco to the eheep when the wool is long. Luckily they're in a blind gully where the sheep don't often "0. But this ewe found them; you could trust her for that. Three consecutive days I rescued her from them and carried her up to the top of the hill, but she went straight back to them like a homing pigeon—sheep will, you knew. As her intentions were obviously suicidal, I brought her into the cow paddock, but she managed to find a flat and remote corner and fling herself upon it. Being a long-woolled sheep, she was particularly suited for casting, and by the time I'd located her she was weak and hopelesly lopsided.

Many Adventures. "I brought her to the garden, where llic family could watch her. A dozen times a day we lifted her up and solemnly walked her up and down; the moment wo left her she assumed an acute angle and tacked perilously across the grass, faster and faster, to collapse and fall presently—and always upon the already damaged side, of course. That kept ue busy and happy iu our slack moments and in wet weather, but if we showed signs of flagging she would immediately exhibit symptoms of giving up the struggle, so that we had to nurse her back to life by the kitchen fire. "Somehow we nursed her till lambing time, but then she stole a march upon us. Her twins were born in the middle of a severe storm, and she left them to cast herself abstractedly in a distant corner of the onion bed. The lambs were dead in the morning, of course, but their heartless mother, doubtless owing to a diet of young cabbages and violets, was capable of feeding at least a pair of twins. I was grimly determined that she should make some return for my kind attentions, so I gave her those two who had lost their mother in the same storm. Perversities. "I followed the usual procedureskinned the dead lambs and fastened their coats on the living pair that I wanted adopted. A normal cwo recognises the smell of her offspring and doesn't mind their curiously doublebreasted appearance. But I might have known that there was nothing normal about this brute, that she hadn't_ even enough maternal feeling to cherish a smell. Nothing would make her take them, and for a month wo had to catch her five times a- day and give the poor little wretches a chance to drink. Worth it? Of course it wasn't, but by that time I'd made up my mind she. wasn't going to beat me. In the end I thought she had. As I grew busier she became more playful, and it took too long to catch her and force ]i«r to become maternal.

"So, in despair, I gave the lambs to another ewe who haa lost her own and seemed more peaceably minded. At once our friend became resentful and fiercely maternal. She chased the willing stepniother away, butted her indignantly into a swamp, and bore off the lambs in triumph. Since then she has become a model mother, and has very nearly killed her adopted children with kindness. That is the history of that particular sheep, and it isn't entirely unusual. Wo have always one or two such treasures to ensure us a merry winter. So you see that our life is not entirely the idle round of pleasure that it appears." The dairy farmer rose stiffly from his log and his eyes followed the ewe with a longing glance. "All the same, old man, you don't have to milk the jolly old thing twice a day," 'he said despondently. . „.., _._•■■■