Stubbey

When I was a child, my family had a miniature sheep. Yes, there is a such thing, however, she was not supposed to be born this way. We think it happened because she was stillborn. After resuscitating her right off, we named her Stubbey. So called for her bubbly, tumbly thanks to the welcome into this world. She came, the first of a set of twins on a Spring Morning. Our first lambs for the year. Our first year raising sheep. - She was sooooo cute. (Insert awww face along with twisty eyebrows and wrinkled nose). - My family bottle fed and raised this young lamb as a house pet just as many families have dogs and cats. We raised her as our miracle baby. This event stays with me so significantly as I recall how the mother had immediately shoved her baby away when the little lamb was at first unresponsive to the oxygen she should be taking in at exit from the womb. This is the way of the wild. Should we treat our own, humankind this way - think of the [less] chaos there would be, because remember, sometimes phenomenal circumstances are derived of such minimal details or events. Though, as we all do dis-appreciate death and it is bred into our existence to survive, we live so long as we breath. I remember thinking of the compassion the mother ewe showed for us and still relief that she would not be required to keep after the little baby. She was confused to our antics to breath life into the cold, still body but obviously understood what at the moment we did not - she was not fit to care for twin lambs. Thus, the universal circle of life taking the responsibility from her and instead of death, that moment became life. When Stubbey finally died at the ripe age of four years (awfully young for even a healthy full grown ewe) we rejoiced because she had lived so long. She had been our own little circus. People from all around knew her as she traveled around in the back seat of our GMC on road trips and other adventures around town. She had been a phenomenal little thing. It was well into my adulthood before I realized what a true blessing this ‘piece of livestock’ had been. A fenominimal event depicting the significance of life and death in this outstanding universe which became the precept for my own love of understanding the extreme depth of each and every meaning, event and circumstance. Stubbey taught me that adversity is surmountable and in the end, it only matters that one has truly lived, breathed air and died to have been of significance in this bright and wonderful circle of circular motion. Life is Good Just BEING Alive.