At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [38]
Noah came into the barn behind Bridget, with Bambi following close at his heels. “Noah, get that deer out of here! Can’t you see we’re busy?”
“I need the posthole diggers if you want me to start on that fence.” But his attention was on Farley, who was wrestling the sheep to the ground, and he looked interested enough in the proceedings to take his time finding the posthole diggers.
“Well, they’re not in here.”
Farley flipped the sheep over to pin its hooves together, as he always did, the sheep bleated in protest, as it always did, and Bridget objected, as she always did, “Do you have to be so rough?”
Bambi wandered forward, neck stretched out to investigate, and that was the beginning of the perfect storm. The sheep Farley was restraining suddenly noticed the deer looming over him and began to struggle and bleat loudly just as Zeb fired up the electric shears. Lori, seeing her opportunity to get involved in the actual process, abandoned the already sheared sheep she had been leading out the back door to the meadow and rushed forward to help. Farley lost his grip on the sheep he was holding, and as it flung off its hobble and lurched to its feet, Rebel, who had been watching from a silent crouch in a shadowed corner, lunged forward in a frenzy of wild barking.
Bambi sprang over Zeb’s crouching back and flew out the door. Zeb dropped the shears in astonishment. Bridget screamed at Rebel, who chased the sheared sheep out the back door and around the barn. The unsheared sheep, having escaped from Farley, charged after its flock mate in blind agitation, knocking Lori to the ground as it passed.
Bridget rushed to help Lori up. Noah, with a shout, took off after Rebel, who had Bambi in his sights. Farley retrieved his soda can from the post on which he had stored it, and spat. Zeb took off his hat and shook his head.
Lindsay was on her hands and knees at the open door to the porch, having just stroked golden stain on the last floorboard on her side of the room, when she heard the roar of barking and the thunder of hooves. She didn’t even have time to gasp as Bambi sailed over the canvas-covered sofa on the porch and careened through the doorway, followed closely by Rebel. The deer’s hooves splayed on the wet floor and he went skidding. Rebel’s claws, scrambling for traction, left long crooked lines in the newly applied stain.
There was a voice: “Don’t worry, I got ’im!” And Noah scrambled over the sofa in hot pursuit.
Lindsay cried, “Noah, don’t—”
But too late. Noah’s feet hit the wet floor and went out from under him; he slid halfway across the room before righting himself and grabbing the rope that trailed from Bambi’s neck. He turned to Lindsay, covered in sticky brown stain, and grinned. “Told you I got him.”
Rebel, hopping on first one foot and then the other, trying to shake off the floor stain that covered his paws, made his way to the door just as Bridget arrived. She gasped as she surveyed the scene of destruction, her hands going to her face.
“Oh my goodness! What happened?”
Cici, poised in a half crouch with her paintbrush in hand, mouth open, eyes stunned, looked slowly from Noah to Lindsay to Bridget. “I have no idea,” she said.
Noah led the deer, slipping and sliding, out of the house and down the front steps, with Bridget following behind, frantically trying to wipe up the little crescents his hooves left on the painted porch floorboards. Lori ran toward them, breathlessly announcing, “We got the sheep back! Everything’s okay. What’s the matter with Rebel?” She stopped short, looking at Noah, looking at Bambi, looking at her mother and Lindsay standing on the front porch with their arms folded and their faces tight. What she could not see, her imagination supplied. “Oh,” she said.
Zeb came up behind her, and addressed Bridget politely. “I’m ready to finish up, ma’am, whenever you are,” he said.
Bridget looked around, flustered. “Well, yes, I suppose we’d better . . .”
“There’s just one thing.”
Zeb looked at Noah and the deer, then at the