Year of the Sheep

We're entering
Year of the Sheep. There's plenty of information available about astrological matters related, I'll not add to the clutter. Instead, a couple of sheepish old photographs from husband's vintage stash, others from his camera; then a link and taster to a nice short story concerning a sheep herder's wondrous experience (no, not that famous biblical one).

Lucky Ewe

  2 from our collection of Artesania Rinconada animal sculptures

Short story. Are y'all siting comfortably? Then I'll begin....

"Lambing Season".

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction,2002 (nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Short Story and a Nebula Award for Best Short Story), written by Molly Gloss (born November 20, 1944). Ms Gloss is an American writer currently best known for historical fiction and science fiction. The story is re-printed in Clarkesworld magazine, and available to read at the website HERE. There's an audio version available too.

SNIPS

.........She had about 800 ewes, as well as their lambs, many of them twins or triplets. The ferocity of the Churro ewes in defending their offspring was sometimes a problem for the dogs, but in the balance of things she knew it kept her losses small. Many coyotes lived on Joe-Johns, and sometimes a cougar or bear would come up from the salt-pan desert on the north side of the mountain, looking for better country to own. These animals considered the sheep to be fair game, which Delia understood to be their right; and also her right, hers and the dogs, to take the side of the sheep. Sheep were smarter than people commonly believed and the Churros smarter than other sheep she had tended, but by mid-summer the coyotes had passed the word among themselves, buen’ carne, and Delia and the dogs then had a job of work, keeping the sheep out of harm’s way......


..........When she had come about halfway down the hill she lost footing and slid down six or eight feet before she got her heels dug in and found a handful of willow scrub to hang onto. A glimpse of this movement—rocks sliding to the bottom, or the dust she raised—must have startled the dog, for it leaped backward suddenly and then reared up. They looked at each other in silence, Delia and the dog, Delia standing leaning into the steep slope a dozen yards above the bottom of the draw, and the dog standing next to the Sputnik, standing all the way up on its hind legs like a bear or a man and no longer seeming to be a dog but a person with a long narrow muzzle and a narrow chest, turned-out knees, delicate dog-like feet. Its genitals were more cat-like than dog, a male set but very small and neat and contained. Dog’s eyes, though, dark and small and shining below an anxious brow........