THE READING NOOK

THE READING NOOK Dead Sheep Don’t Breathe

by Amy Barnes

Bees droned nearby in the hot Oklahoma sun.

As the water from the hose caused bits of grass to swirl in the stock water tank, my eyes drifted toward the dark silhouette of our dead sheep lying in the dark shadows of the barn.

It had been a great disappointment to the family when the sheep died because she had been close to birthing her lamb. On a farm as small as ours, the death of a pregnant ewe was a huge loss.

Sweat dripped into my eyes as I watched the side of the dead sheep rise ever so slightly and fall. I stared. Again, the sheep’s side rose and fell, so slowly and so slightly it was almost unnoticeable.

I wiped my eyes and stared hard even as my feet started walking, then running toward the sheep.

Dead sheep don’t breathe, my mind kept saying. I knew the adults had declared her dead a few days before. Only the intense heat and hardness of the soil had kept us from burying her.

Yet, it became more and more apparent the closer I got that she was moving. I stood over her and stared, and watched a dead sheep breathing. I knew logically that this could not be happening. I thought it was a trick of the heat.

I turned and, forgetting the 100-plus-degree heat, I ran, ran faster than I had ever run in my 15 years of life.

When I made it into the un-air-conditioned farmhouse, I could not draw breath enough to say more than, “breathing...sheep...dead sheep...breathing.”

My aunt looked at me. She just looked at me. Then she ordered me to calm down before giving a full account of myself.

When finally I had managed to get my story out, she looked at me thoughtfully, not moving. She

photo by Sam Carter never thought one should move more than necessary when it was hot. Slowly rising to her feet, she made her way to the paddock with me impatiently bounding by her side. Inside my head I was screaming...a dead sheep is breathing! By the time we got to the sheep’s side, I thought I was going to explode with anxiety and overheating. Sue looked at the sheep. She walked around the sheep. She stared at the sheep. Then she ordered me to stay by the sheep. She returned with a syringe of fluid that she plunged into the sheep. The sheep came out of her coma enough to bleat weakly. Within a few hours, she had given birth to twin lambs. As she lay dying, we managed to get a little of the colostrum from her udder into the little frail lambs, and we thanked her for her gift to us. I promised her I would take good care of her babies for her. I don’t know if she heard me though, she was gone from us so quickly. She had never even stood up the whole time. Just laid on her side and birthed the lambs. I kept my promise to the momma sheep. I raised the two lambs by bottle, I was even

Here’s our contest winner!

Congratula�ons to… Cheryl Bogucki of Medina who submi�ed the winning �tle: “My Final La�e,” for the book within The Reading Nook short story “One Week With Kyle Hodge,” which published in Joy of Medina County Magazine, April 2020 through July 2020.

Cheryl won more than $300 in prizes for her winning �tle!

The contest entries were submi�ed, uniden�fied, to the author of “One Week With Kyle Hodge” to choose the winning �tle.

photo provided

A special THANK YOU to the companies that donated prizes for our contest!

Keep reading for more great stories and future contests! Visit our website, JoyofMedinaCountyMagazine.com, for free subscrip�ons and to see current and past issues of Joy of Medina County Magazine!

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12 J o y o f M e d i n a C o u n t y M a g a z i n e | S e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 0 continued from Page 10 allowed to bring them into the house for the first few weeks so they would be safe from predators. They lived in a giant cardboard box until they learned to jump out, then they were moved outside. The two rascals had come to think of me as their mom so wherever I went, the lambs were sure to follow.

It became a family joke that it was easy to tell where I was because of the clomping of eight little hooves scrambling and thumping behind me. Somehow my dreams of showing one of the lambs, the one I’d so imaginatively named Lucky, at the local fair never became a reality.

Even after the lambs were old enough and we moved them outside, they followed me and bleated for me, eventually deciding the funniest thing to do was to ram the backs of my knees, sending me flying.

Eventually the two were sold. It was a part of the reality of farm life, there is little room for pets. I knew it had to be done, but still I cried endlessly when Lucky left. It was a favor to me that the lambs, now sheep, were sold. Usually extra sheep ended up on the dinner table, but no one had the heart to make me eat my beloved lambs. After he was sold, Lucky got so physically aggressive with his new owners that his future ended up including the dinner table. He always had been the most bullheaded of the two. The ending of this story has never been satisfactory to me, but it is farm life. Well-known for being hard and unforgiving, it also has its moments of breathtaking miracles and beauty.

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