Liam had a great day today. We took his bandage off early this morning, five days ahead of schedule. The wounds from the bit have completely healed, he is breathing normally, and he is the Prince Of Bedlam Farm, climbing on rocks, racing around the pasture, hanging out with his dad Ted, driving mom a bit nuts with his great sense of exploration. I could have named him Christopher after Christopher Columbus, but Liam is the right name for him, I think Liam Neeson would like him.
He is a character, a hell-raiser for sure, he is curious but also calm, Suzy is a phenomenal mother, one of the best I have ever seen. Mother and son go into the pole barn often during the day, Liam takes quick naps. He goes out to pasture, explores every nook and cranny of the farm. I think he will be banded tomorrow, a form of neutering, when the vet comes to look at Ma. I’ve got some neat photos, I’m putting them up on Facebook as an album, also a few on the blog.
The farmers say that when a sheep is ready to give birth, she starts bagging up, filling her udders with milk. I took this photo of Zelda this afternoon and if she bags up any more, she’ll float away like the Goodyear Blimp. She is sure ready to go. Any day now.
My windowsill gallery at noon. Throughout the day, the light and color change, the gallery changes texture, changes shape. I think I am a curator also, there are so many things some men never get to understand about themselves. This is why I never took a photo until I was in my sixth decade. Perhaps I lost valuable time, perhaps I just wasn’t ready.
I let Ma out of her stall this afternoon for a few minutes, she grazed with Suzy and Liam. Eadon Ryan, the Vermont student who sold Ma to me came by to see her. He asked if he could come bye if she is euthanized, I told him maybe, I’d have to think about it. He’s a natural farmer, a true animal lover. He lives in the real world of real animals.
Several boundary issues have cropped up, as they always do when emotional issues involving animals present themselves, and this is helping me to understand how it is the New York Carriage Horses got into so much trouble. We have failed to come to a balanced understanding of animals, we have emotionalized them beyond reason, we are projecting so many of our neuroses and concerns onto them.
When I mentioned this morning that I am not comfortable performing a C-section on Ma, should it come to that, people on my Facebook page tried to start a collection to pay for it so that I would agree to it. It did not occur to any of them that my reasons for hesitating were not about having enough money, they were about how much I felt is appropriate to spend on a sick and aging ewe. First of all, it will be a private decision, between myself, Maria and the vet. I will share it, I am not turning it over to a poll on Facebook.
This week, I’ve spent a great deal of money on lamb and ewe care. That is and should be a factor, but I value perspective when it comes to animal, and the looming tragedy of the New York Carriage Horses speaks of the perspective we are losing about the animals we love in our rush to personify and emotionalize them, and to dump all of our neurotic human junk onto their lives.
This is just how the carriage horses face a great tragedy – their banning from New York City. The city’s leaders and people who call themselves animal rights activists have lost touch with animals, who they are, what they are, what they need. They have become – as some people view Ma – as emotionalized objects of human need and human fantasy.
There are people in the world who truly believe now – and for the first time in human history – that is abuse for animals like draft horses to work. There are people who believe the only place for domesticated animals like horses is on rescue preserves and the rich farms of celebrities. There are people who believe that horses who are safe and well cared for should be torn from their work and safe homes and sent out into the mass horse slaughter that sends 155,000 horses to a brutal death each year. And there are people who will look you in the eye and tell you that every one of the 220 draft horses in New York will go to safe homes and be fed for the rest of their lives at an estimated cost of $20 million dollars.
Killing horses to save them is not perspective, it is the loss of reason.
I see this loss of perspective every day in the stories of the sheep and lambs at Bedlam Farm. I am more than a little responsible for this, because no matter what I write, cute photos of animals trigger a very strong response that has little to do with animals or their lives. Photos, it seems, have more power than words.
In a world where there are so many human needs, I believe it is inappropriate, even immoral, to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a ewe who cannot deliver her offspring in a healthy way. Nature would surely know how to handle it, she would be long gone by now. I have already spent a lot, it is enough, the barn looked like an emergency room this morning, this will either work or not. I believe it is culturally-sanctioned abuse to keep animals in crates in no-kill shelters for the rest of their lives.
The horses remind us that they will soon disappear from the earth if there is no work for them to do, they are being pushed to extinction by people who know nothing about them and are claiming to speak for their rights. And there will be no sheep on the earth either of farmers cannot balance them or their cows and goats and their welfare and care with the economic realities of the world.
I am not a farmer, I am a writer devoted to writing about animals and living with them. The sheep need perspective just as the carriage horses do, and perspective does not mean treating them as fragile children, offering them lives without limits, fighting to keep them alive at all costs by any means, arguing that they are too sensitive to breath fumes in traffic. Just as the horses will have accidents and some will fall of disease, so will some animals die or call upon us to decide what is appropriate. In my mind, it is a moral, not a financial question.
I am not certain Ma ought to be alive today, let alone tomorrow morning. It will take me awhile to sort it out. But I will not go further, there will not be a C-section here. And I will not seek or accept any donations from people.
I respect death, is the other side of life itself. Loving animals does not mean keeping them alive at all costs by any means as so many human beings struggle in poverty and need. It does not mean banning them to rescue farms or slaughterhouses.
Sacred is the work between people and animals. Sacred are the people who fight to keep animals in their lives despite the most overwhelming odds. I will make the best decision I can for Ma, and for me and my family and my idea of the place of animals in the world. I pay for my own life, I accept payment for my work, not my life. Tomorrow Maria and I will make the best decision we can, and them move on. When we lose perspective, it is the animals who pay, every time.
