Lindsey the Milkaholic

I spend five minutes, three days a day, sometimes more, squatting in a stall, holding a bottle, and watching Lindsey (my husband named her) suck the bottle.

Sometimes, the lamb's twin brother, sidles next to me for a good back scratch while I'm feeding.

The lambs' mother often stands at the far end of the stall, watching.

Most people, me included, will say bottle lambs are a pain. At two and a half weeks old, Lindsey eats four, sometimes five, times a day. Soon she'll be down to four bottles, then three, then two before she's finally weaned at two months.

Bottles lambs are noisy, bleating for milk when they see a person. They climb and paw at humans, which is cute at fifteen pounds, and not so at fifty. Plus, they can be prone to digestive issues. There's absolutely no economic reason to feed the bottle lamb. Yet, year after year, we do. There's been Dee, Trey, Annie, Regina, and now Lindsey.

And I seldom complain. I wonder if it's because, there's something mesmerizing about that furious sucking, the wrinkled nose, the pale eyelashes.

(Lindsey is the lamb whose mother rejected her. After holding the mother for ten days, we decided she wasn't going to accept her. )