An Ass and Three Sheep to the Wind

All I wanted to do was move the fence--and before I knew it, Harry was off down the dirt road, the sheep were off down the dirt road, and there was nothing but dust where I was. I swore softly in Portuguese, because chances were, this was going to get ugly.

Harry ran off about, oh, maybe 10 yards, and then he ROLLED. He frickin' rolled on the frickin’ dirt road to scratch his back. and then he looked back at me (picking my way barefoot on the dirt road), waved a friendly ear, and high-tailed it into a neighbor's yard. Where he proceded to eat some grass.

When I caught up with him again, I could see the look of donkey smugness on his face. I spread my hands and smiled invitingly. "Haaarrrry," I crooned. "Aren't you having a nice time. C’m'ere and let me scratch your back." He shook his head. (It was then that I began to wonder about my intelligence relative to his.) And then he gave a little hop and began to run in circles around a tree in the backyard of an apparently empty house. I trudged after him, thinking that he would eventually get bored of this, musing on what the homeowners would think when they got home and found unidentifiable fewmets on their back lawn next to the swing set.

Now, my life is way too complicated for your average chase after barnyard animals. When I ran off to follow Harry and the sheep, I left my two children plus their friend at home. My 7-year-old (we'll call him Napoleon) saw the jail break. I figured he'd stay near home. The two ten-year-olds were, to my mind, variables--as evidenced by the fact that here came one now, trailed by the other two. Uh oh. A donkey chase is one thing, but a donkey chase with inexperienced children is quite another.

Simplify the equation. I said, "Guys, the best thing you can do is go back and open up the fence again, then find a way to block off the dirt road so that when they run back, they go right through the hole they came out of, okay?” The children gazed at me, then slowly turned around and went back. "Can I play video games?" called Napoleon. "Um," I said, then had to sprint again, as Harry and the three sheep had just found a new way to get into yet another neighbor's yard.

So we did our little maneouvring, Harry and the sheep and I, for maybe twenty minutes. But just when I thought I had them, when they looked like they were ready to head back up the road, (and this is Harry's point of view) a large white stationary contraption suddenly stuck out a wing and discharged a large round white slow-moving man in a white suit with white hair. Harry snorted, the Fima Feng (my new name for the sheep) scattered, and they all passed me again going the wrong way. My neighbor had arrived home in his white Chrysler when we weren't looking.

The man grinned broadly at me. "Need help?" he called, oh so amiable. "No thanks," I grinned (grimaced) back. "I can handle it."

They headed into the large white man's back yard, a lovely little refuge complete with winding brook (clearly weed-whacked regularly, a thing I can't personally conceive of), lawn chairs, bar-b-que grill, and clothes line. And Harry and the Fima Feng walked right into a trap: a loop of the brook that nearly closed at one end with a line of trees and bushes. Gotcha.

Harry assessed the situation. "Give it up, Harry," I said. "You can't get out of here. The bank is steep, and you’re a donkey. You can’t jump." He rolled his eyes at me, and tried to sneak past on the left, all the time watching me carefully and—I could swear—plotting trajectories. I crouched and moved to block him, feeling like a basketball guard. He stopped and regarded me.

An alert ass is really kind of beautiful, if you're not ready to murder him. Even when you are, those lovely black innocent eyes and the wavy ears can almost make you laugh. Well, okay, I did laugh. I thought I had Won. He tried to get past me on the right. I blocked him. He lunged immediately the other way, and I got there first. He was trapped.

Just then, the Fima Feng jumped the brook. Blast! I thought. I hadn't expected them to be so creative and brave and independent. I started muttering in Portuguese again. All it took was for Harry to do the same and I'd have lost my advantage.

Harry was immediately upset. This was nearly intolerable for him. He likes the Fima Feng and he doesn't like being separated from them. He faced the brook, and shook his head. He tried to go around it. No good. He looked back at me. "No joy here," I said comfortably.

And then, Harry the Ass gathered himself. He got his front feet close to the bank. He tried to get his back feet to go to the other side of the brook while leaving the front feet in place to protect himself from the brook. The result was that he was bent almost in the shape of a hot-air balloon. Then he began to work all of his feet, one by one, up and down like they were on strings being pulled from above. Honestly it looked like he was trying to cross the stream without actually having to jump. He seemed to think that he could just will himself up and over this barrier. For a minute, it looked almost convincing. And then, probably more to his surprise than to mine (though my jaw had dropped when he began looking like he could levitate), he jumped. He jumped almost completely vertically, with only the slightest bit of energy applied to moving forward. He reached a truly amazing height, and as his body went up, his head went down so he was sort of watching the brook go by underneath him. And during this whole maneouvre he kept his four feet together, though they dropped a bit behind his body as he went across.

And he landed, miraculously, on all four feet at once (!) on the other side. He sank deep into the mud, panicked, and lunged free.

I won't repeat the stream of invectives. I'm sure you can imagine. Effin' ASS being chief among them.

So now he wasn't having fun any more, and I was mad. Time to mean business, I thought. I did what I knew would bother him the most—I cut the sheep off from him and drove them across the brook. He couldn't easily jump back over, and I was content to let him stay on the other side of that creek until I was ready to come back and get him. "Maybe THEN you'll be glad to see me!" I tossed over my shoulder as I waved my arms at the sheep, driving them through the large white neighbor's yard, and out into the dirt road. They went reluctantly, but without Harry they were easy to drive.

As we rounded the house again (I ignored the large white man grinning from a window), I looked past the sheep down the road to my house. A small person suddenly jumped up and begin dragging a section of fence across it. "Oh, well done, you!" I thought gratefully to my son. It all worked beautifully. The sheep ran full tilt down the road, one 10-year-old closed off any exit but the hole back into the paddock, and the other held the fence and then closed off the gap at exactly the right time. Napoleon (my seven-year-old) looked on, half his mind on what was in all this for him. I cut off the Fima Feng's retreat. Oh so excellent! they were in. We all whooped and high fived each other.

But the Fima Feng were upset, and I was afraid they would break back out through the fence (it was moveable electrified mesh netting) to get to Harry again. I looked at my firstborn. “How about you run inside and turn the fence back on. Then come back out.” He nodded. I regarded the rest of my small troops. “Here’s the plan. You,” I pointed to Napoleon, “watch the road for Harry. As soon as you see him, run inside and unplug the fence again. You,” I pointed to my firstborn’s bewildered friend, whose face wore a mixture of amazement and acceptance—like, gosh, maybe this is how the world works, after all—that you see only on the faces of children when adults are being strange and amusing. I regarded him. “You,” I said again. “Your job is to stand in the middle of the road, wave your arms and look as big as you can.” I felt the first tiny glimmer of doubt as he sort of nodded and swallowed. “And you,” I said to my now returned firstborn, “As soon as Napoleon turns it off again, you go and grab two poles and drag the whole two sections of fence across the road, okay?” He nodded, the picture of 10-year-old eagerness and competence. “Everybody understand?”

“Yes!” they chorused, my sons beginning to enjoy themselves, their friend manfully willing to take one for the team.

“Good,” I said. “We can do this if we work together. I’m going back up the road to find Harry. Will you be ready if you see him coming?”

“Yes,” they said again.

So off I went, and as I turned around and jogged back down the dirt road, I thought for only a fleeting second that this may not be a plan without flaws. But just then, as I looked up, I saw Harry emerging from the large white man’s yard, clearly upset. “Ah ha. Now you’re not so smug!” I yelled, regretting, in a way, that I had missed his jump back over the brook. I ran wide to the left and got behind him.

It was a lot easier now. He wanted his Fima Feng, and after looking into just one or two back yards he had a pretty good idea where they were. He started to run up the dirt road.

And after that, everything went pretty fast. Harry galloped up the road for home, the kids jumped up again, and I saw Napoleon moving fast across the driveway and out of sight. Somebody yelled, “It’s off!” and my firstborn grabbed the fence.

And screamed.

Here, revealed, are the flaws in my plan:

1) My younger son would not be able to open the door to the house;

2) my firstborn would test the fence between pulses, and therefore proceed directly to seizing it in both hands;

3) the sheep were going to surprise me yet again; and

4) my son’s friend was afraid of sheep.

The fence is designed to convey a shock but not to cause injury, so although I was sorry for my firstborn’s shock, I wasn’t actually worried. His scream was quickly followed by a yell of rage at Napoleon, who responded with, “Do it yourself, then!” Harry was, by now, at the fence, which had been only partially dislodged. He wouldn’t go through the gap, but the Fima Feng--obliging creatures that they are--they were out in a trice. Reunited, the animals easily dodged the last 10-year-old, he of the heretofore unrevealed terror of sheep (and perhaps the dodging was all the other way).

I swore, in English, in front of the children. Not far down the road was another road, and if the animals reached that other road we would have a much harder time capturing them. I had wanted them to stay in the cul-de-sac.

As Harry, Snowy, Miracle, and Eric the Red galloped around a bend in the dirt road, I turned to the children, sorry to have left them with so much responsibility. I knelt in front of my firstborn, who was in tears, and put my hands on his shoulders. “You okay?” I said. He sniffed and nodded, glaring at his brother. “You were fantastic. These things happen—and it’s nobody’s fault.”

He looked up. “Will they be all right?”

I laughed a little. “Oh yes, you wait and see. We’ll be laughing about this over dinner. Trust me.” Yeah, and I had also told them we didn’t get earthquakes in Vermont. Well, we don’t, usually.

I looked at Napoleon, who glanced up at his older brother from under a resentful brow, then turned the look on me. “The door was locked!” he said. “Why did you lock the door, Mommy!” I hadn’t, of course, but sometimes the door knob sticks.

“Oh, honey.” I said. “It must have stuck. And you were so on the job—I saw you run across the driveway. You did exactly as I asked you to, and it’s not your fault it didn’t work.”

I looked at our guest, who was also close to tears. "You almost had them," I said. "I'm impressed."

“I’m afraid of sheep,” he replied. “I thought they were going to run me down. One of them had horns.”

“Even if you hadn’t been afraid of them, you couldn’t have stopped them,” I said. “The road is too wide for one person to block. Don’t feel bad, okay?” He looked at me doubtfully.

I breathed, because now I knew that I needed help. At these childrens’ ages I had already lived on a farm long enough to have a good instinct for what to do in this kind of situation, but for the first time I realized just how different my childrens’ world had been up to this point from mine. I felt sorry. It wasn’t fair to give them more than they were ready for.

At this point, Napoleon, sensitive as always to a shift in the atmosphere, said, “Mommy?”

“What,” I said, distractedly, my mind on whom to call for help.

“Can I play video games?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Maybe the squad would help.

“How about computer?”

“Sure.”

“How about Grand Theft Auto?” he said, eagerly reading the signs of distraction on my face.

I looked at him then. “No!” I said. “Don’t push it.”

“Aw.”

He turned and went back to the house. My firstborn and his friend looked at me.

Where were Harry and the sheep? I thought, a bit frantically, but still hoping they hadn’t left the dirt road. I ran inside, unplugged the fence, grabbed the phone, and brought it along with me. I dialed the station.

Dan picked up the phone. “Rescue.” He said. This is a very straight, very responsible and stressed out young man. I think I’ve seen him smile only once.

I said, “Hey, you guys busy?”

“Not really,” he said.

“Well, I need a little help,” I said.

“What’s up?”

“Um, my three sheep and my donkey have gotten out of their paddock, and I think they might leave the cul-de-sac. I wondered—can you guys help with traffic control?”

Pause. “Your what and your what?” he said.

“Three sheep and a donkey.”

“Um,” he said. “Just a sec.” He said to somebody, “Can we help Sheila with her three sheep and her donkey?” An explosion of laughter, and somebody said, “Sure! Why not.”

“Dan?” I said.

“What?”

“You don’t have to tone this out, do you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“We’ll be right there.”

“Okay.”

I hung up and got in the car. The two 10-year-olds wanted to come along, so I said, “Yeah, come on,” started the car while they got in, and headed for the end of the cul-de-sac, looking on both sides of the road for Harry and his Fima Feng. At the end of the cul-de-sac was another car parked with the people standing outside of it. My heart sank. But no, they were getting bicycles out of the trunk. Good. I parked and got out. Just then the two cars from the squad pulled in. I stopped to talk to them.

Dan was in the first car. He very seriously nodded, drove past me, and went up to assess the situation at my house. He returned in a few minutes and waited. Phil, the driver of the second car, grinned and said, “Did I hear right?”

“Probably,” I said, with studied nonchalance.

He kept looking at me, grinning, and Danielle, sitting in the passenger seat, stared fixedly out the front window, her face admirably immobile given the obvious shaking of laughter in the rest of her body. I was resigned. This was why I hadn't called them sooner. “Go ahead and laugh,” I said. I would never hear the end of this.

They both did. “What are you doing with a donkey?” Phil asked.

“It’s a spiritual thing,” I said flatly. “Can you help me?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “What does he look like?”

“What?”

“The donkey. What does he look like?”

“What do you mean what does he look like?” Danielle said, choking. “He’s a donkey!”

“Well, I don’t know anything about donkeys,” he retorted. “Don’t they have long ears?”

“Yes,” I said, gently, thinking that the children would be more helpful after all. “Long ears.”

“What color is he?”

This was too much. “He’s GREY.” I snapped. “What possible other color could he be?”

“Well, I don’t know. And just how long are the ears?” He placed his hands about three feet apart. “This long?”

“No,” I said, dully. “No.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead.

Danielle was out of patience. “Like this,” she said, in the manner of one who is going to take over, placing her hands about one foot apart. She climbed brusquely out of the car. “What do you need?” she said.

“Well, I think Phil should stay in his car, don’t you?” I said. Ours eyes met. She nodded. “Phil, how about you take the boys and go park your car just north of the opening in the fence. They know where it is.”

“Okay,” he said, with obvious relief. “I’ll do that.” The boys, happy to be smarter than a grownup, climbed with alacrity into his car.

Danielle and I walked over to the other car, the one that had parked just inside the cul-de-sac before the squad arrived. The people near it were still doing something with bicycles.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” said a woman about my age, who was helping a teenager set up for his bike ride.

“Have you by any chance seen a donkey and three sheep?” I asked.

She gazed at me for a long moment. “Yes?” she said. I think she may have been either relieved to find that she was not hallucinating, or considering the possibility that I was part of the hallucination. For my part, I was by now pretty sure that she was part of my nightmare, no matter what else might be true. Beside me, Danielle began to weep.

But she had seen them, and this was a relief. “Do you know where they are?” I asked.

She pointed over my head, into yet another neighbor’s back yard. “Right there,” she said.

I turned. It was true! They were right there, hidden by a willow tree. I asked Dan to block the way out to the main road.

Just then, the grandmother who lives next door, who now had a donkey in her yard, came out onto her front porch. She waved a cheery hello and walked carefully down the steps. She’s just recuperating from knee surgery, but this was something she absolutely could not miss.

“Hi,” she said, grinning. “That your new donkey?” There is nothing like the way a farm woman from Vermont can talk to a flatlander who has done something ridiculous.

“Yeah,” I said. “Want to meet him?”

“Oh, sure!” she said happily.

“Okay,” I said. “Can you stand right there and wave him off if he tries for the main road?”

“Sure,” she said, in that musical Vermont lilt. There would be no problem from her quarter. She, at the age of 82, was more adept with a donkey, certainly, than either Phil or Dan.

Danielle and I walked towards Harry. Danielle has good instincts—she took up a perfect position and altered it perfectly in response to whatever Harry did. He had to face me. He looked up from his grass, the picture of friendly curiosity, like somebody who wonders whatever you’re doing here.

“Come on,” I snapped. (No more crooning.) “Time to go home.” I reached toward him to smack his rump, but he was already running, straight for Gram, who responded as a true Vermonter, with an unequivocal statement to him that he couldn’t go that way. He believed her—anybody would—and ran the other way. Danielle cut him off, though, and he had no choice but to go back down the dirt road towards home. Snowy, Miracle, and Eric the Red followed. “Blaaat,” somebody said. I could hear Danielle giggling as she ran first this way, and then that. Dan had closed in behind me. We had gotten Harry trapped between my garage and the fence, which on this side was (of course) closed. But he couldn’t get away.

Any creature with an ounce of sense would have known he was beaten. But not Harry. Endowed with a good deal more than an ounce of sense, he still looked for a way out. And he found it: Dan. Here again, unbeknownst to me, was a person with a Fear. Of donkeys. Harry faced Dan, and Dan melted away in front of him with a muttered “Er… Sheila?”

“What are you doing?” I asked. Kindly and sweetly.

“I’m just… I just thought he might bite.”

“He doesn’t bite,” I said. These people needed so much briefing!

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, for about the fourth time that day swallowing my ire at Harry, as Dan and I stood side by side and watched him head back for the main road. I sighed.

But we had all forgotten Danielle. I heard her gasping for air as she ran stumbling and laughing around some cedar trees. They were both lost to sight. She would need help, but first I unfastened the fence on this end, and glanced across the paddock at Phil and the boys, who were laughing with each other on the other side—except my firstborn, who suddenly said something rather seriously to Phil, who reacted by reaching protectively towards his car and saying something in a forceful tone. (I learned later that my firstborn had said, “I hope he doesn’t just ignore this barrier and jump right through,” at which Phil had responded, “You HOPE not?! My CAR is on the other side of this barrier!”)

Suddenly, all three of them stiffened and looked off to my right. “AAAAAh!” yelled Phil. And again, “AAAAAAAAAAh!” as he tried to decide whether to stand and protect his car or run behind it.

It was Harry. Danielle had cut him off (Danielle-the-Magnificent—all-hail-Danielle, I breathed) and he was clattering, Fima Feng in tow, back up the road straight at Phil and the boys. Straight at my firstborn, actually, who looked rather small just then.

But I had totally underestimated that child. He stood his ground. He held the fence firm across the road, and he SCOWLED from his full height (which happens to be at Harry’s eye level). Harry quailed when he saw him. My firstborn stood stock still, relentless, and I was put in mind of all those times he and I had clashed like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. But it was Harry in his sights this time. My son glared. He might even have growled. And Harry seemed to know in his heart that, if he didn’t go into that paddock, my firstborn would hunt him down and surely kill him. He turned left, hesitated just for an instant, and trotted meekly into the paddock. My firstborn soberly shut the fence behind him. We all cheered.

Danielle jogged up, panting and still laughing. “You’re amazing,” I said. “How can you be in so many places at once?” But she was still laughing too hard to respond.

Phil drove up to drop off the 10-year-olds and rolled down his window. “Your son scared me,” he said. I nodded.

Dan walked over to me. “Anything else?” he said, with quiet competence.

“Um, no,” I muttered, looking down. “Thanks, all of you. Drinks on me tonight.” But I was embarassed in the face of this man whose life would never ever include such adventures as this one, and who seemed to know that the secret reason these things happened to me was that I needed them to.

I looked down at my firstborn, gentle determined soul that he is. He was looking at Harry. “I hope he never does that again,” he said. Harry was pretending not to notice him, though one ear stayed cocked in his direction. I put my arm around my son’s shoulders. “He wouldn’t dare.” I said.

Just then, my little Napoleon came outside. “That was fun, Mommy!” he said, the picture of delight.

“Ya think?” I said.

“’Course!” he replied. “I got to play video games!”

I laughed and picked him up, he with his you-can’t-resist-me smile.

“You need a rest now, right, Mommy?” he continued. I nodded, pleased that he would notice. “So can I keep playing video games?”