Джеймс Хэрриот - All Things Bright and Beautiful

Despite the wind cutting over the straw bales into my face I found myself grinning down at the scene; this was always the best part, the wonder that was always fresh, the miracle you couldn’t explain.

I heard from Rob Benson again a few days later. It was a Sunday afternoon and his voice was strained, almost panic stricken.

“Jim, I’ve had a dog in among me in-lamb ewes. There was some folk up here with a car about dinner time and my neighbour said they had an Alsatian and it was chasing the sheep all over the field. There’s a hell of a mess—I tell you I’m frightened to look.”

“I’m on my way.” I dropped the receiver and hurried out to the car. I had a sinking dread of what would be waiting for me; the helpless animals lying with their throats torn, the terrifying lacerations of limbs and abdomen. I had seen it all before. The ones which didn’t have to be slaughtered would need stitching and on the way I made a mental check of the stock of suture silk in the boot.

The in-lamb ewes were in a field by the roadside and my heart gave a quick thump as I looked over the wall; arms resting on the rough loose stones I gazed with sick dismay across the pasture. This was worse than I had feared. The long slope of turf was dotted with prostrate sheep—there must have been about fifty of them, motionless woolly mounds scattered at intervals on the green.

Bob was standing just inside the gate. He hardly looked at me. Just gestured with his head.

“Tell me what you think. I daren’t go in there.”

I left him and began to walk among the stricken creatures, rolling them over, lifting their legs, parting the fleece of their necks to examine them. Some were completely unconscious, others comatose; none of them could stand up. But as I worked my way up the field I felt a growing bewilderment. Finally I called back to the farmer.

“Rob, come over here. There’s something very strange.”

“Look,” I said as the farmer approached hesitantly. “There’s not a drop of blood nor a wound anywhere and yet all the sheep are flat out. I can’t understand it.”

Bob bent over and gently raised a lolling head. “Aye, you’re right. What the hell’s done it, then?”

At that moment I couldn’t answer him, but a little bell was tinkling far away in the back of my mind. There was something familiar about that ewe the farmer had just handled. She was one of the few able to support herself on her chest and she was lying there, blank-eyed, oblivious of everything; but…that drunken nodding of the head, that watery nasal discharge…I had seen it before. I knelt down and as I put my face close to hers I heard a faint bubbling—almost a rattling—in her breathing. I knew then.

“It’s calcium deficiency,” I cried and began to gallop down the slope towards the car.

Rob trotted alongside me. “But what the ’ell? They get that after lambin’, don’t they?”

“Yes, usually,” I puffed. “But sudden exertion and stress can bring it on.”

“Well ah never knew that,” panted Rob. “How does it happen?”

I saved my breath. I wasn’t going to start an exposition on the effects of sudden derangement of the parathyroid. I was more concerned with wondering if I had enough calcium in the boot for fifty ewes. It was reassuring to see the long row of round tin caps peeping from their cardboard box; I must have filled up recently.

I injected the first ewe in the vein just to check my diagnosis—calcium works as quickly as that in sheep—and felt a quiet elation as the unconscious animal began to blink and tremble, then tried to struggle on to its chest.

“We’ll inject the others under the skin,” I said. “It’ll save time.”

I began to work my way up the field. Rob pulled forward the fore leg of each sheep so that I could insert the needle under the convenient patch of unwoolled skin just behind the elbow; and by the time I was half way up the slope the ones at the bottom were walking about and getting their heads into the food troughs and hay racks.

It was one of the most satisfying experiences of my working life. Not clever, but a magical transfiguration; from despair to hope, from death to life within minutes.

I was throwing the empty bottles into the boot when Rob spoke. He was looking wonderingly up at the last of the ewes getting to its feet at the far end of the field.

“Well Jim, I’ll tell you. I’ve never seen owt like that afore. But there’s one thing bothers me.” He turned to me and his weathered features screwed up in puzzlement. “Ah can understand how gettin’ chased by a dog could affect some of them ewes, but why should the whole bloody lot go down?”

“Rob,” I said. “I don’t know.”

And, thirty years later, I still wonder. I still don’t know why the whole bloody lot went down.

I thought Rob had enough to worry about at the time, so I didn’t point out to him that other complications could be expected after the Alsatian episode. I wasn’t surprised when I had a call to the Benson farm within days.

I met him again on the hillside with the same wind whipping over the straw bale pens. The lambs had been arriving in a torrent and the noise was louder than ever. He led me to my patient.

“There’s one with a bellyful of dead lambs, I reckon,” he said, pointing to a ewe with her head drooping, ribs heaving. She stood quite motionless and made no attempt to move away when I went up to her; this one was really sick and as the stink of decomposition came up to me I knew the farmer’s diagnosis was right.

“Well I suppose it had to happen to one at least after that chasing round,” I said. “Let’s see what we can do, anyway.”

This kind of lambing is without charm but it has to be done to save the ewe. The lambs were putrid and distended with gas and I used a sharp scalpel to skin the legs to the shoulders so that I could remove them and deliver the little bodies with the least discomfort to the mother. When I had finished, the ewe’s head was almost touching the ground, she was panting rapidly and grating her teeth. I had nothing to offer her—no wriggling new creature for her to lick and revive her interest in life. What she needed was an injection of penicillin, but this was 1939 and the antibiotics were still a little way round the corner.

“Well I wouldn’t give much for her,” Rob grunted. “Is there owt more you can do?”

“Oh, I’ll put some pessaries in her and give her an injection, but what she needs most is a lamb to look after. You know as well as I do that ewes in this condition usually give up if they’ve nothing to occupy them. You haven’t a spare lamb to put on her, have you?”

“Not right now, I haven’t. And it’s now she needs it. Tomorrow’ll be too late.”

Just at that moment a familiar figure wandered into view. It was Herbert, the unwanted lamb, easily recognisable as he prowled from sheep to sheep in search of nourishment.

“Hey, do you think she’d take that little chap?” I asked the farmer.

He looked doubtful. “Well I don’t know—he’s a bit old. Nearly a fortnight and they like ’em newly born.”

“But it’s worth a try isn’t it? Why not try the old trick on her?”

Rob grinned. “O.K., well do that. There’s nowt to lose. Anyway the little youth isn’t much bigger than a new-born ’un. He hasn’t grown as fast as his mates.” He took out his penknife and quickly skinned one of the dead lambs, then he tied the skin over Herbert’s back and round his jutting ribs.

“Poor little bugger, there’s nowt on ’im,” he muttered. “If this doesn’t work he’s going in with the pet lambs.”

When he had finished he set Herbert on the grass and the lamb, resolute little character that he was, bored straight in under the sick ewe and began to suck. It seemed he wasn’t having much success because he gave the udder a few peremptory thumps with his hard little head; then his tail began to wiggle.