Cornfields (Pearl - part 1)

Doesn't this picture just melt your heart?

​A couple of years ago, I was doing my "Cappuccino" thing with my then 5 and 2 year old, walking through our urban neighborhood streets on our way to a happening neighborhood early summer party. I could smell the urban springtime smells, I could practically see the skyline of downtown as I sauntered along.

​It was May - so my gentleman farmer was down at the farm, doing the "Cornfield" thing.

​My cell rang. It was My Gentleman Farmer. He said that there was a lamb in distress and being rejected by its mother.

See, in my Cornfield world, you don't take a sick runt lamb to a vet. No, you pick it up, put it in another pen with another mother and hope the ewe (aka female sheep, for us urbanites) lets it nurse and takes it as her own. Some ewes do, some don't. Every farmer is different in their care of the lambs, but in this case, I knew that this runt lamb was screwed.

My Gentleman Farmer said he was bringing the lamb home.

Home.

To my cappuccino home.

I asked him if that was legal. Surely there is a city ordinance in this urban land full of cappuccinos, that you can't have a lamb in your yard.

But alas, the lamb was coming to the city.

​She arrived late that night in a big box filled with hay. She stunk. She was very tiny. Probably 5-7 lbs. All legs and gangly. Not necessarily Mary's Little Lamb nor one that Martha Stewart would have on her ranch in upstate New York.

​My boys loved her. They named her Pearl. We gave her a bath in my white clean urban bathtub in my clean urban, white subway type tiled bathroom.

My bathtub was dirty and my bathroom wasn't clean afterwards. But Pearl the lamb was.

She was scared. But she soon took us on as her mothers. All of us.

We fed her a lamb formula out of a vintage cola bottle with a large nipple on top.

How vintage chic is that?

She would cuddle in the nook of your neck. She also purred like a cat. Yes, the lamb purred like a cat.

​The Cornfield in me took over, I was in love. We put her in a diaper (I know, I know ...but that's the Cappuccino in me - I couldn't deal with lamb potty and poo in my urban house with my white fluffy area rug, and beautiful wood floors).

I also took it upon myself to potty train her too.
​
We'd take her outside and put her down on the grass in our front lawn, and when she went potty we'd praise her, give her a warm bottle or snuggle her. Like a dog. She got it pretty quickly. It was awesome.

​The 2nd morning we had her I was in full Cornfield mode.

​I had a mug of probably a locally roasted coffee, with the perfect amount of organic cream. I had the lamb in one arm and my coffee in the other hand. I stood on my front stoop and set Pearl down. I sighed and was enjoying the beautiful morning as my pet lamb sniffed and gracefully did her business. Then, I looked up and noticed the neighbors in their yard across the street looking at me....and also, the man walking his dog on the sidewalk looking at me. The dog was still. Never had he ever, ever, in his urban dog life, seen a baby lamb.

Neither had my neighbors.

One neighbor said..."did you get a dog? Or is that a cat?"

I said "no, it's a lamb."

Nothing. No response.

The walking neighbor leaned in and said..."it's a lamb?"

​The dog went nuts...

Pearl scooted back to me and I scooped her up and just smiled.

​That's when the cornfield and the cappuccino within me merged.