Peabody, a twin with a lamb kid sister, was born weak on September 24. Lydia found him sprawled out on the barnyard earthen floor first. She put him with his mama ewe to suckle, and he had a strong reflex to live. His mama rejected him. We held the ewe a couple times a day for him to get enough nourishment to stay alive. But six days later, after a first freeze of a fall night, he couldn't get enough for his outpacing demand. I found him on the sunny afternoon with a deathly star gazing look, his head rolled back. He was too weak to move or suckle, almost cold. I took him to the house, and cousin Dana hoped I could save a life. I said he would be a miracle, but miracles haven't ceased. An hour later with steady trying, he took the bottle nipple that I put into his mouth and began to suck. I had never put him down. It was such a miracle. I thought we were home free, but in this box in the living room, under a heat lamp, he again lost his ability to suck. I was dribbling milk into his mouth and rubbing his throat for a swallow reflex in the middle of the night. He smelled like death for two days. It was a lesson in steady perseverance, not giving up. He lived.
For two and a half months, I bottle fed Peabody. He never learned to grow out of being a bottle baby. He was a picture of utter dependence, frailty, dumb with disabilities - a picture of a sheep at his most vulnerable. He reminded us that humans are typically most like sheep in the whole of the animal kingdom. Peabody never learned to graze with the flock, and he went into a neurological tailspin after putting him out of the house for weeks. He died in his sleep in his little hay house that Marshal made on the 15th of December after a morning bottle feeding. My little lamb died of loneliness and isolation in social distancing as a 2020 trend of the most vulnerable.
