The mare and the maas

Be assured, spring is but a whisper away. Ragged-winged murders of crows hovered, twigs in beaks, over the tall trees bordering the A1 as I drove to work this morning; the partridge family whirred out from almost underfoot as I walked across to the horse field tonight, and things are growing on the grass and rustling in the hedgerows…

To you and I, they’re lambs. Small, usually white, rather cute things which bounce around in fields with their mates. But, if my horse is to be believed, these innocuous little creatures have been hiding their true nature – quite literally like wolves in sheep’s clothing. Indeed, she spends much of the spring trying to convince me that they are equine-eating monsters that creep into the hedge, and wait until she’s walking past so they can pounce. The sharp evasive action she takes when she spots them has saved our lives on numerous occasions.

I don’t know where this fear of lambs comes from; probably the same place as her terror of plastic bags caught in hedges on windy days. There is a definite hierarchy of hedge-monsters – and lambs are near the top. Most years, there are lambs all around the horses’ field, and usually, a flock comes and grazes alongside them to take the top off the rich early summer grass. Those ones aren’t so frightening – she trots passed, shaking her head and pretending to be tough. It’s when they’re hiding that they’re obviously up to something – like the chunky-bodied, thick limbed little fellas that were crouched in the nettles as we cantered along the edge of a field last summer, then shot out at the last minute. The mare had hysterics.

I have no argument with sheep. The only thing that confuses me about them is why such beautiful babies grow up into such ugly adults. I’ve seen some sheep that look like bulldogs, while others appear to have eyes made of marbles, through which they survey the world with glazed expressions.

However, the Herdwick ewes in the field next to my mare are the exception that proves the rule. Looking like a cross between a dog and a sheep (the mare was similarly confused when they arrived), they have such pretty, intelligent faces: you could almost imagine they were thinking. They do everything together and when their husband-to-be arrived, they backed off in a huddle. He must have been a smooth one though, because he soon had them talked around. On warm days, he lay watching them, sun on his back and a smug expression on his face: “Yep, them’s ma bitches.”

The ewes are now just about ready to pop. But no matter how cute the mothers, you can be certain their children will be the spawn of Satan. Just ask my mare.