We Interrupt This Activity

About an hour before dark, my activity stops. I find myself sitting atop a horse, leaning against a hoe in the garden, standing on the back porch, to watch the evening spectacle: the lamb zoomies. While their mothers graze, the lambs, nineteen in all, participate in a pickup game of tag. The rules change nightly, depending on what pasture they are in. In the field with the barrel, they choose to race around it. Last night, they raced from the pasture, through the gate to the paddock, and back out again. It's chaos. Think twenty horses breaking from the gate in the Kentucky Derby. Except the lambs have no rules against bumping and colliding. At six weeks of age, they aren't nearly as coordinated as a three-year-old horse. So, I watch, and laugh, as the jumble of color -- the whites, the reds, the tan, the spotteds, the browns, and, of course, the black and white lamb, race through the gate. Once in the paddock, they jump and prong and swerve and collide as they turn to race back out. The leaders are constantly changing. This goes on for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. When over, the lambs are panting. A quiet then settles over the farm as the ewes, finished grazing, return to the paddock. The lambs nurse for a final time, then curl up next to their mothers for the night.