Idiot sheep

Lost a sheep a couple days ago. Owen and I were just going past the barn when we glanced into the goat room to see two sheep tangled in wire around the fence post in the middle of the room. One was clearly dead; the other, one of the ram lambs, lay resignedly, too stiff to struggle and aware of the futility. I went to him first, working him out of the wire and massaging his hind legs, which were so stiff he wouldn't get up on his own. Once he was up and walking I turned to the dead lamb. He was one of Starling's sons, a big wether destined for eventual slaughter and, like the other lambs born here, ridiculously skittish and high-strung. By the look of it, he'd gotten a little tangled, struggled, and ended up wrapping himself so tightly around the post that he strangled himself. Where the ram lamb had resigned himself to wait for rescue, the wether lamb had fought his way into an even worse and inevitably fatal position.

Dad and the boys hung the carcass up in the red garage and drained it. It took them a while, but they got it dressed and cut into the basic chunks, which came to Mom and me for further processing. It was about eleven when we finished the last leg and put the rib cage in the refrigerator for tomorrow. It was alone in the fridge; we'd cleaned and turned on one of the refrigerators in the garage for the meat, but everything else fit in the kitchen fridge just fine. Oh, well.