Stella

April blew in like a gust of north wind. The ground frozen solid, the air biting cold. But temperature and mother nature could not control when mother ewes would deliver. This early April brought us a cluster of new lambs. They snuggled with their moms for body heat unaware that another month would have been a more welcoming time to be born. One particular night was especially bitter. Strong winds blew through the vented barn gate and onto the new born lambs. They all fared well, except for one black lamb named Stella, who contracted pneumonia. Stella quickly lost strength, soon she was unable to stand or nurse.

But while life is happening in the barn, it is also happening in the house; sometimes the two being completely unaware of the other. While Stella was struggling to breathe, the kids were finishing lunch and stuffing books in their backpacks for afternoon tutoring. Soon we drove off unaware of how sad the remainder of the day would be.

We had barely gotten home when the phone rang. It was bad news. My neighbor and friend had passed away from her battle with cancer. She was a single mom of 7 kids. This was devastating news. I stood dumbfounded, trying to process the information. Meanwhile, my oldest was in hysterics outside by the chicken coop. One of the chickens was dead. Jackie was very upset and puzzled as to why I didn't seem to care. I stood there, weighing the death of a neighbor and our chicken. The chicken no longer mattered.

We fished the chicken out of the coop, and tossed it off in the woods. Jackie was then sent to the barn to fill up the hay-feeder. Soon she was running back towards the house in tears. "Come quick," she tells me. I followed her to the barn where we found Stella at death's door. Jackie picked her up, tears falling down her face. "You just can't let her die, you just can't!" she said. She stroked Stella's wool, holding onto her for dear life. "It's a day of death," she said. "First the chicken, then our neighbor, and now this lamb is dying. I can't take another death today, you have to save her!"

I prefer to let mother nature take her course, but it was heartbreaking to watch my oldest child learn the effects of living in a fallen world. She was witnessing the effects of the curse: death, suffering, disease, hardship, unfairness, and a whole lot more. She was learning that life is messy, it isn't just love, friends, mac and cheese, and Christmas gifts. She was realizing there is a whole other world outside the four walls of our house. This cold April wind blew its chilly breath on a defenseless newborn lamb and blew a new knowledge into a little girls heart.

Stella came into our house that night. She slept in a laundry basket in the front hall. We fed her with a bottle of milk-replacer. The next day I gave her a shot of vitamin E and an antibiotic. Eventually she was moved to the upstairs bathtub. We covered the tub floor with hay for her to lie on, as we continued our struggle to feed her. Stella did not want to drink from the bottle. We persistently plugged along and soon Stella was standing in the tub.

We followed the vet's instructions and in two weeks time we were able to move her back into the barn, where we hoped she'd be taken back by her mother. She wasn't. Her mother rejected her and I no longer wanted her in my house. My bathroom now smelled like the barn, and the smell was beginning to slowly slip out the bathroom and invade the rest of the house. The kids were now thoroughly grossed out by the manure covered hay and sheep urine in the tub, their expressions told me that I would be the one cleaning it, so I did. I cleaned it once with bleach, twice with bleach, and it still smelled like the barn. It was as if the pores in the woodwork had opened themselves up to drink in this new essence and then seal it in. I opened the windows to usher the odor out, but it stayed. Stella was in the barn, but her essence stayed in the house for weeks.

The fact that Stella's mother would not take her back left us with quite a chore. Every couple of hours we had to go to the barn, catch Stella's mother and restrain her while Stella latched on. The mother ewe grunted, butted, kicked, fighting this like it was a great violation against her, but we kept hoping she would re-accept Stella of her own free will. She wasn't interested. It wasn't long before this find mom, catch mom, restrain mom, let Stella drink (tank-up) routine became quite laborious for all of us. How happy we were when she was old enough to drink water and we could end this process.

This little lamb, named in Latin for a starry night was fully alive. She grew bigger and stronger. We had saved her but as the months wore on we would be sorry we had interfered with the laws of nature. Stella would turn out to be anything like the peaceful pleasure of a starry night. She would be an exasperating headache and a tough lesson for all of us.