Pear Orchard Paddock has been temporarily renamed Porno Paddock.
This is not, obviously, as idyllic a country name as Pear Orchard Paddock, with all of the cheerfully frolicking sheeply images it conjures. But it accurately describes the antics that are going on out there.
I hate to sound like that professional prude, the late Patricia Bartlett, but, really, one must avert one’s eyes.
The ram is in the paddock. A ram in the paddock is rude. He wears a harness, with a dye tag attached to the front of the thing. The dye rubs off on the bums of our girls, denoting that they have been tipped.
We ought to be used to this by now – after all, we have seen what goes on out there for six years now. But somehow, when it comes around again, it always comes as a shock.
Our last season’s lambs are still babies, to me. To a sheep farmer, they are hoggets and hence available for humping.
Elizabeth Jane, my pet ewe, has been had at. She is sporting a red bum. Other ewes are sporting green or blue bums. Their rear ends look like crazy clown’s wigs. Elizabeth Jane had her remaining cancerous ear cut off a few weeks ago.
Her lack of ears has evidentially not diminished her desirability. Rams are not lookists.
Reginald, EJ’s ram lamb from last year, is back home, having been saved from being sent to China or, quite possibly, the works. He had the vasectomy, which means he can still do the rammy business without the end result. I held him throughout said op.
I visited him the day after – with biscuits, in lieu of a bunch of grapes or a packet of frozen peas – and he didn’t appear to hold the nasty business against me.
During his time away, he has been hanging out with other ram lambs and they have obviously been rough-housing, which means butting. He was a right bugger when he was younger and I had to train him out of butting me. He left home a sweet, placid ram lamb. He has come back a right butting bugger. I will have to train him all over again.
I suspect there is another reason for him playing up. He obviously doesn’t know that those bits vital to the making of lambs have been removed. All he knows is that in the next-door paddock are the ewes, and he wants to have his way with them. He can’t get to them, so he is making do with me, which means butting me while making disgusting Benny Hill-like faces.
The only upside of the 90mm of rain we got on Saturday is that I could make my getaway through the small lake that has appeared. Reginald does not like to go through small lakes. He’s a mummy’s boy, really.
Somehow, his education does not appear to have involved reading the Greek myths, specifically that one about Oedipus who married his mum; that turned out as badly as could have been foretold.
Reginald is supposed to be a companion for Xanthe while her usual companions, Elizabeth Jane, Becky and Sp’eriment, are off being rogered by the ram. On the orders of her obstetrician, Xanthe is no longer allowed to have lambs. This is not only because she doesn’t much like lambs, but because she has a misalignment of her jaw and will eventually have to be hand-fed.
Xanthe hates Reginald. She hates all sheep. She doesn’t know she is a sheep. She thinks she is a person, one of royal birth. When the time comes for her to be hand-fed, she will no doubt demand that she is fed from a silver spoon.
It is autumn, which means it is fig and feijoa time. I don’t give a fig for figs. I am fond of a feijoa. I have fig trees. I don’t have a feijoa tree.
Hint, hint. I was so desperate for a feijoa that I furtively helped myself to seven from the Gifting Table at Masterton library. The sign read: Take What You Need. We already had a bowl of autumnal windfalls, pinched from the neighbours.
Did I actually need a feijoa? I don’t know. I do know they were delicious.
