There is a story about caring for those in difficulty. It goes like this: "Anyone who has a hundred sheep, if they count them at the end of the day and find one missing, that person will leave the ninety-nine and go and search for the lost until they are found." The story was told by Jesus when some grumbled about the people he welcomed among his disciples.
The story is a favorite image for stained glass windows. These picture a clean and tidily dressed shepherd with a lamb over their shoulders striding toward home. These artists never went looking for a lost sheep.
One summer evening I went out in the drizzling rain just before dusk to close the barn door. We lock our sheep in at night to protect them from coyotes. I scanned the field to make sure they had all come in and saw one standing with its head in the air in the far section of pasture.
This particular sheep had been kept inside for several days because it had a thiamine deficiency. For any non-shepherd reading this: thiamine is produced in the sheep's rumen, but sometimes the balance in that organ is thrown off. The result is blindness and weakness. This is more common in lambs, but I had treated this ewe with thiamine injections until it seemed better.
But clearly the problem had returned. She had followed the others out by sound, but had lost track of them and where she was. So I walked out to get her.
Now the way Jesus told it, sheep follow the shepherd's voice, but on our farm, they tend to run away from us. So I circled around her so that if she ran she'd head in the right direction. This worked. At first. The trouble was she couldn't see the gap in the fencerow, so she ran straight for the rocks. I had to get beside her, and convince her to head along the pile of stone toward the gap.
Again she tried to clamber over the rock, and I had to get her unstuck. Remember it was drizzling? And she had been outside for hours. Her wool was sopping wet and cold.
Finally, she could sense the path and turned through the gap and ran a few meters in the right direction. Then, her front legs gave way and she lay down. Remember I mentioned that as well as blindness a thiamine deficiency causes weakness? So now I had a 150 pound frightened creature on the ground. I let her catch her breath, then I lifted her onto her back legs, and she got up. She hurried a few more steps toward the barn and fell again.
Again, I got my hands in her back hip joints, leaned in with my knees and lifted her so she could get her back legs under her. She walked forward until one leg gave out and she fell. We went through this a few times, my hands getting colder and my pants getting wetter and dirtier each time. She was getting tireder and tireder. Each time she fell, it took more effort to get her to her feet.
About thirty meters from the barn door, she wanted to give up. I got her back legs under her, but she did not try to get up the rest of the way. I had to lift her onto her front legs. Still she didn't move. I had to carry her back end and push her forward. I tried talking to her, told her that I would keep her inside to eat the next day, but she wasn't listening.
Although it was cool and drizzling, I was sweating. I wiped away the sweat with the back of my hand, leaving, I am sure, a dirty streak across my forehead. My hands smelled of wet wool.
The next time she fell was in the muddy barnyard. If the door had not been ten feet in front us, I don't know what I would have decided. But I got my hands into her cold, wet, muddy wool, used my knees again and pushed her into the barn.
I closed the door. Exhausted I headed back to the house to have a bath and find clean, dry clothes.
There are people who seek the lost in our society, and it is not clean and tidy work. Thank you for the efforts you make!
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.
