Second Chance Angel - Chapter One

This is the first chapter of my new book "Second Chance Angel."  I hope to have this sent to the publisher within the month.  Written for all ages.  Inspirational/Devotional. Please leave constructive comments.  
Thanks,   

Patrick

  

Chapter One

Rejected

            The little lamb was born early one morning. It was the 3rd of April, but it was still raining in Northern California.  His mama was Sarah.  Sarah was only one year old and this was her first lamb.  The pains had started in the night and Sarah had become frightened and disoriented.  After she delivered her lamb, she began running around the pasture crying loudly.  Then, drawn by her instinct, she went back to the newborn and started to lick him clean.  After a few minutes she left him by himself and went back to running around the pasture. 

            That is how Farmer John found them when he came out early in the morning to feed the sheep.  There was Sarah, running around and crying, and there was her lamb, a white and forlorn little wet lump, lying in the mud.

            "Uh-oh," thought Farmer John, "looks like we got ourselves a bummer lamb."

            Carefully picking the little lamb up, he held him low to the ground so Sarah could see him, and began to walk to the barn.  He hoped that Sarah would follow him, but she didn't.  Instead Sarah began crying again.  She would take a few steps toward Farmer John and then start to run after the other sheep.  It took Farmer John an hour to get them in the barn.  He closed the door behind them and rustled around in a big cardboard box by the alfalfa bales until he found a rope with a clip on it. 

            Tying Sarah in a stall, he filled a bucket with warm water and added some molasses to help Sarah get her energy back.  He looked at the two sheep, the nervous ewe and the brand new lamb.  The barn was more like a shed, but Farmer John liked it there.  It was warm and dry and he smelled the alfalfa and the straw in the stall, slightly damp where the sheep were standing.  He looked around the barn, taking in the hay hooks on the shelf, the vet supplies in the plastic box that Farmer's Wife used to clean up foot rot and ringworm, and the empty bags in a pile that he had slit open to pour the sweet grain into the big blue plastic garbage can.

            When they left the old house down south he hadn't even thought about it much.  They had lived there twelve years but the city grew up around them and he started feeling the need to stretch out.  He thought that it would have been nice to have this place when he and Farmer's Wife were younger.  Up in the corner a carpenter bee was buzzing around the post where he was boring out a nest. 

            "I better spray those buggers, or this old place will fall down around my ears," he said out loud.  He left the two sheep alone in the barn.  As he walked back to the house he thought about his sheep.  He had raised a lot of lambs since he moved to the farm and he was beginning to understand sheep pretty well.  He hoped that Sarah would bond with her newborn after a few days in the barn, but he knew the chances were slim.

            At dusk Farmer John and Farmer's Wife went out to the barn.  The lamb was trying to nurse, but just when he would get to the teat, Sarah would lower her head and with a sideways sweep she would butt him away. 

            "I called him Petey, cause he's got that black spot around his eye and he looks just like Spanky MacFarland's dog," said Farmer John. 

            "Well, it looks like Petey is not long for this world unless she starts nursing him, so go cut me a willow switch," said Farmer's Wife. 

            When Farmer John came back she took the switch and began to methodically switch Sarah's ears.  She kept it up until Sarah bent her back legs and lowered her head.  By then the ewe was so shaken that she stood stock-still and Petey crowded underneath her and began to butt Sarah's udder to bring the milk down.  Soon his little tail was shaking back and forth as he suckled his dinner under his mama's belly. 

            It had been a revelation when Farmer John first saw a lamb's tail start waving wildly when the lamb connected to his mother and nursed. 

            "Two shakes of a lamb's tail," he had thought and he began to understand his sheep in a deeper way. 

            "I hope we don't have to do that every time," said Farmer's Wife.  But when they went out, Sarah began to butt Petey away again.  That night Petey lay alone in the hay beside Sarah who was standing tied in the stall.  If Petey could have thought anything, it might have been, "Why doesn't my mama want me?" or, "Am I bad?" But Petey was just a lamb so he fell asleep...