Sheep Rolling by Crysse Morrison
The sheep lay on her back, bulky and bedraggled, her legs stiffly erect. I thought she was dead until the snow caked lane brought us closer and I saw her head loll sideways. She was limp, a bundle of grey rags, belly up, her brittle legs stretching absurdly. She seemed to be twisting around to discern our approach. Her dull eyes stared at nowhere.
'What on earth has happened to that one?'
We stopped. Level with her now, we could see she was not bleeding or birthing, simply fallen. 'They can't get up' Elaine said. 'If a sheep falls on its back, it can't roll over. They stay there until someone pushes them back up.'
We looked around. Ice gripped the landscape. There was no sign of habitation, only whiteness stretching to the horizon below a pale feverish sky. The lane was thick with drifts and scarred with no other footprints than our own. Hunks of broken ice lay like tumbled sculpture beside a water trough. Everything was drained of colour.
'What if someone doesn't?'
'Their lungs fill up, and they die of pneumonia.' Elaine spoke bleakly. My scarf lashed me, damp from wind cut tears and the condensation of my breath.
'We'll have to do it' I agreed. Laboriously we climbed the low fence and began to trudge across the field. Motionless sheep watched our progress.
'It's not difficult, apparently' Elaine said. 'You just get on one side of them and push them into a standing position.'
'They look so heavy.'
We reached the fallen sheep and stood uncertain. She lolled her head again in that sad twisting movement, trying to see what we were doing behind her. She made no sound, but her stick-like legs wavered and her thick flanks trembled.
'If we both get on one side of her' said Elaine 'perhaps we can roll her past the point of axis, and then she may stay upright.'
I squatted reluctantly. I thought, one of us will have to take the weight of her, avoiding those hard hooves if they kick out in panic. The other will have to force those stiff legs to the ground, and together we will have to steady and push her. Elaine squatted beside me.
The sheep slewed her gaze round to us with dilated eyes. Her palpitating terror made me afraid for her too. Suppose she died of shockas we struggled with her.
'Together - ' said Elaine, and together we plunged our hands into the fleece. It felt tepid and slightly sticky. Together we began to roll.
Her flank swung and in an instant she was upright; in another moment she had blundered away. She ran for a few yards then stopped and turned to look at us.
She was indistinguishable now from all the others, apart from a dark stain from the drenching field on her fallen fleece. She stared silently. They all stared. Elaine and I stood up, impulsively hand-in-hand.
For the rest of our walk we talked elatedly about that moment. How unexpectedly easy it had been to roll the sheep back upright - how exhilarated we felt.
'We saved her life' I said.
'It was more than that,' said Elaine. 'It was like being at a birth.' And we kept trying to describe to each other the extraordinary thrill of that moment of deliverance. I knew I would never forget that sheep's impassive twisted face and the sudden rush of life as it staggered away. But the image of deliverance curiously became mingled with another memory; my mother grey and inert in her hospice cubicle as I left her waiting to die.