But the weekend ended on a sour note last night. I was tired, but I wandered down to the neighbor’s house, just to say hello. They had a sickly black lamb. It was light and weak and you could feel its little ribs. It was a beautiful jet black color. They were pretty sure it wasn’t going to make it, but there was a bottle nearby with maybe a shot glass full of milk left in it. I thought “why not?” and I squeezed a little milk into the lambs mouth and felt him swallow it. I was encouraged. Maybe I could save this lamb! They mixed me up a more full bottle of “Lamb-Saver” and I tried to feed it some more. Squeezing the milk into it’s mouth bit by bit. For a couple minutes everything seemed to be going okay, but then I felt the lamb go limp and the milk was coming out of his mouth instead of going in. Somehow I had killed it. Probably by not paying close enough attention to whether it was swallowing the milk or not. It was sudden and sad and more than a little embarrassing because, after all, it was not my lamb. It was like going to someone’s house and killing their pet.
Sure, the lamb had been rejected by its mother and was probably had only a tiny chance of surviving. But it’s still pretty miserable to kill a creature you’re trying to save by squirting too much milk into its mouth.
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On an unrelated note, I came back from New Orleans last week with several extra copies of both Zita the Spacegirl and Tales from the Bohemian Highway. I imagine most of my regular guests on this blog have already picked up a copy of one or both of the books, but they're here in the shop if you're interested.
