Pastorale

Sharon was here yesterday.  She has a new method to keep the raccoons and the rats out of the food bins.  "The rats gnaw through the plastic garbage cans, the raccons open them unless I bungee them real tight. Galvinized works, but what we do now is buy junk refrigerators or freezers.  The rats can't get into them.  Of course, what you spill is feast for the mice."  Sharon's husband is a vet, but at lambing time last winter he was still recuperating from a hip replacement.  "One of the ewes," Sharon says, "was having a hard time delivering her lamb.  I went out to help pull.  I pulled out a head and a leg.  The lamb must have been dead for a long time.  I whipped out the cell phone.  I said to David, 'I don't care how long it takes to limp down here, you're in charge.'  He took one look, got the rifle, and shot the ewe."