Sylvia's Farm by Sylvia Jorrin

eye, or did she hear them first? A low rumbling sound came from deep in her throat. She faced off the dogs knowing I was the lesser of the two threats. After all, although I had brought her pain, I had also hand-fed her, and perhaps had brought some relief as well. The dogs, on the other hand, commanded her to move where she didn’t want to go.
    I had gone up the side hill to the edge of Sheep Meadow to search for her dead body. It was time, I thought. It had to be all over. The vet had come and couldn’t help. I had called him twice. “This is not nursing care any longer,” I had said. “This is a job for a vet.” She had lost a horn. I don’t know how. This Horned Dorset who was to become the mother of my future Horned Dorset flock. And the flies, so prevalent in August, had laid their eggs in the convenient hole left by the horn. I had penned her, treated her with Pine-Sol and peroxide. I dared not put tar on it for fear of driving the larvae that much farther in. A screwworm bomb is often successful, but I couldn’t find one locally. Anywhere. For more then a week, there was a message left on my answering machine to greet everyone who called “… please get me a screwworm bomb.” The ewe stayed in the barn for a while and then began to hide outside. I treated her daily, while inside, with peroxide. The Pine-Sol seemed to irritate more than it helped. A week ago I found her. The skin had beenrubbed raw on that side of her head. The fleece was worn off her neck. She was in agony. She had begun to eat grain from my hand when in the barn. She also associated me with the dreaded wound and my unsuccessful efforts to help. It was then that I made my second call to the vet and begged him to come.
    The next morning she was with the flock by the side of the barn. Her left eye was closed. Her neck was bleeding. I got a loop over her head and the remaining horn. She couldn’t see me when I approached. She fought a little harder than I did. She is a little stronger and a bit heavier than I am. She is certainly a wily old ewe. Low-slung. Strong. All I wanted from a Horned Dorset. A fighter. Tough. The most powerful animal I’ve had in the barn. But I had one thing over her. While she was trying to save herself from the short-term agony she suspected she’d have to endure, I was trying to save her life. So despite the fact that she had it way over me in strength, I had it over her in power. I won.
    I tied her to an apple tree and there she stayed until the vet’s truck pulled in. The maggots didn’t leave when he squirted a medicine in and didn’t leave when he put an antiseptic on the wound. She kicked and fussed and he couldn’t get close. “She wasn’t raised here,” I apologized. “If there were only something to keep the flies off,” he said. “Can we use Ectiban?” I asked. “It works on the cow to keep the flies off her.” I hadn’t used it before because I didn’t think it could be used on a raw wound. It shouldn’t be in the bloodstream. The vet said to get it. I did. The ewe stood still for me while I scratched it into her fleece and dusted her head. I talked slowly to her. She listened to me. It will never cease to amaze me. Ever. I really can never understand why it happens. Or how.
    I slipped her out of her noose and off she went. Up across the brook. Up the meadow to the shelter of the cool dark stone wall. I saw her grazing there a couple of times. But she’d disappear beforeI’d get close enough to check the wound. The day before yesterday, I didn’t see her at all.
    For the past three weeks, since she lost the horn, I’d felt a lingering sense of being out of control. A sense of failure. It crept into my heart when I least expected it and without warning. I didn’t connect it with the ewe, just with circumstances beyond my control that were a bit too much for me this past month.