[Jacob-list] Back to the primitives...

[dave & katrina]

I like your story, Susan!  Can easily visualize it all happening.  *smiles*
Even while the word 'primative' is starting to get tiresome even to my own
ears, I too sometimes just want a label for the crazy behaviors I see
happening out there once in a while.  Mother/babyhood does seem bring out
the best of them too.
Katrina Lefever, Chicory Lane
http://wwwfac.wmdc.edu/HTMLpages/Graduate/TI/pages/lefever/chicory.htm


----- Original Message -----
From: "Susan Nielsen" <snielsen at orednet.org>
To: <jacob-list at jacobsheep.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 1:28 PM
Subject: [Jacob-list] Back to the primitives...


> An observation from this morning, that (please forgive me!) makes
> me open up the subject of primitive characteristics again...
>
> In the early light of dawn I looked out the window and saw that
> the ewes and lambs had all escaped their paddock into the llama
> pasture. Stolen grass is always better than your own grass, I guess.
> I dressed and went down to round them up and drive them home (oh,
> I so wanted that last half-hour in the sack, since we are still on
> lambing vigil during the night).
>
> All the ewes had slipped through, and most of the lambs with them.
> The exception was one pair of twins, the offspring of the ewe I like
> to think of as "different." This old girl is the one I think of as
> primitive: she is of a lighter build, has a lighter fleece, just looks
> different, behaves in a sort of more wild animal way when it comes to
> curiosity and investigation and territory. She's just a different sheep
> from the others. She was down in the llama barn, gobbling llama hay
> (which is the same hay as sheep hay, but of course belongs to those
> other animals). Her two lambs were back in the sheep shed, alone and
> waiting for her, for all the world like two wild animals left in the
> nest while their mother foraged. When I saw them there, they stood
> side-by-side and stared at me, looking like two lambs before the wolf
> ("Are _you_ the wolf?").
>
> It had never occurred to me that lambs would not follow their dam
> wherever she went. When the ewes saw me at the gate, most of them
> bustled off to the far side of the pasture, looking as guilty as can
> be. But my odd, half-wild ewe came barrelling back to the sheep shed
> as fast as her little hooves would carry her.  She knew perfectly well
> where her lambs were, and she came through the gate at a run.
>
> Now: this is definitely Different. Is it Primitive?
>
> [Fred: Please don't ask me to define Primitive again; I'm working
> on it! ;-)]
>
> Susan
> --
> Susan Nielsen, Shambles Workshops      |"...Gently down the
> Beavercreek, OR, USA -- snielsen at orednet.org  |stream..." -- Anon.
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