A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [54]
“They’re sheep, ma’am,” replied Sam politely.
“But—they’re on my porch!”
“Yes’m,” he agreed with a thoughtful nod of his head. “They surely do appear to be.”
“But I just painted that porch! Look what they’re doing! They’ve ruined the paint! There’s mud everywhere! They’re eating the wicker! Oh, my God, there are a hundred of them!”
“Twenty-five,” corrected Farley, but Cici was already gone.
She flew out of the kitchen and into the front room, banging her ankle against a pile of two-by-fours and half hopping, half limping to the bank of windows that overlooked the freshly painted front porch. The flow of sheep covered the wraparound porch, from breakfast area to rocking chairs, and spilled down the steps into the front lawn, a big, muddy, ragged, wooly mass of grumbling, shifting, baaing life. They seemed to be wedged between the rail and the wall, as though, having made their way up there, they couldn’t figure out how to get off.
“Shoo!” Cici cried, banging on the windowpane. “Get out of here!”
Not a single sheep even looked up.
“Problem is,” Farley explained mildly, following her, “sheep don’t know how to back up.”
Cici tossed him a half-frantic, half-incredulous look, and flung open the door. “Get!” she demanded to the sheep, clapping her hands. “Go on, get out of here! Scat!”
Lindsay and Bridget crowded around her at the door. Sam and Deke followed with slightly less enthusiasm, coffee cups in one hand and sticky buns in the other.
“Reckon we could get a rope around the neck of the lead sheep,” suggested Sam. “Pull him over the rail. The others might follow.”
Deke shook his head. “Gonna have to take the railing off.”
Farley said, “I could go home and get a dog.”
Cici looked from one of them to the other with an expression that was, for the moment, completely unreadable. Then she turned and plunged into the fray. Grabbing a handful of wool, she jerked and hauled and tugged and pulled, crying, “Scat! Go! Scoot!” until the shifting mass of dirty sheep fur began to rumble with agitation, swaying from side to side, plunging and bleating. Lindsay and Bridget set aside their coffee cups, and, with an exchanged looked of resignation, waded into the sea of sheep. Following Cici’s lead, they each grabbed a sheep and began to tug and shout until suddenly one of the sheep broke free and sprang, as though on steel coils, up and over the railing. A mass riot followed. Bridget lost her balance and sat down hard on the floor, hands over her head, squealing incoherently. Lindsay yelped as she took a hard hit in the shin. Cici stumbled backward, gasping, as sheep began to jump over the railing, spindly black-stocking legs flailing, just like in a cartoon.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Lindsay, rubbing her shin as she limped inside the doorway. “I thought sheep were supposed to be peaceful!”
“They’re killers!” screeched Bridget, hands over head. “They’re killer sheep!”
Sheep continued to pour over the railing, splintering boards, leaping over each other, landing splay-legged on the lawn and trotting off, baahing hysterically, in sundry directions.
“Stupid critters,” acknowledged Sam, sagely.
Deke said, “What’re you going to do with them now?”
Cici looked in dismay at the ruined porch, and the shaggy muddy creatures who were now making ruin of their lawn. “The garden,” she managed.
“Oh my God, the garden!” Bridget struggled to her feet. “We’ve got to keep them out of the garden!”
“What you need is a dog,” volunteered Farley.
Lindsay caught Bridget’s hand and pulled her down the steps toward the garden. “Get the dog!” she cried.
For the next twenty minutes the women formed a human fence in front of the vegetable garden, shouting and flapping towels at the sheep who ventured too close while Sam and Deke, catching on to the urgency of the situation, eventually put down their coffee cups and stood ready to haul the particularly obstinate sheep to the back of the flock. By the time Farley roared up with a bedraggled, dirty, black-patched dog balancing in the back of his pickup truck, they were filthy, sweaty, and hoarse with