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One spring night in the mid-1950’s when I was 14, my mother woke me from a deep sleep saying “Billy, Billy wake up! Your father has to talk to you.”
“Mom, its 1:30 in the morning. Can’t this wait?”
“NO BILLY, COME DOWNSTAIRS RIGHT NOW!” she shouted. Then I knew it was serious.
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I grew up on a farm near a small town in rural Ohio.
We raised livestock, not crops. It was a small farm, and my father had to work at a factory job to make ends meet.
There was only my older brother, my father and I to manage the farm. My mother was the matriarch, carrying the burden of maintaining a household of men with her typical Irish dignity and an ethic of hard work. My father was a big man, 6’5” tall and 250 pounds and he knew how to do everything-string fences, build barns. Well, when I was young, it seemed to me he could do anything.
The 50’s were a time of big changes happening in America. Small farms were being sold and consolidated into large farms. Others were sold to developers, who created subdivisions from pastures and cropland. Still other small farms were just abandoned as the pressures of dropping prices and rising costs drove the farmers out of business. Many had dogs that were left behind to fend for themselves. We often saw a pack of feral dogs roaming the fields.
Later that year after my brother went to college, disaster hit our small economic unit, which is what a farm really is. My father was involved in an industrial accident at work and broke his hip. With my father’s injury and my brother at college we had to go into survival mode and sell most of the livestock to make the farm more manageable.
And so, the downsizing of the farm began. After the sadness of selling the livestock, all we had left were the sheep. The remaining chores fell on my shoulders. I felt I had a lot of responsibility, but at the same time, I was excited, like a typical teenager.
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We looked forward each year to seeing the cute lambs. If a lamb tried to suckle from an ewe that was not the mother, she would butt him away. This year, one lamb was injured trying to nurse from a sheep that was not his mother.
We ended up bringing the lamb to the house to raise him. He lived in our basement under my patient mother’s watchful eye. It was my job to feed him from a bottle, which was actually a liter size pop bottle filled with milk and vitamins to imitate his mother’s milk. I also had to clean up the sheep droppings from the basement. The dark side of learning responsibility.
The lamb survived and actually became my pet. I named him “Icky” because I was reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving at the time. I named the lamb after the main character, Ichabod Crane.
I remember, this one time, walking down the street with a bottle of milk in my pocket with Icky following behind. He would follow me anywhere if I had his bottle. My neighbor wore thick coke bottle glasses and still couldn’t see well. When we passed his house one day, he was sitting on the porch and said, “Billy, if I didn’t know better I would say that was a lamb following you”.
Later that year when Icky grew too large for the house, we put him back in the flock. At first, Icky would always be the first in the flock to come running to see me. Of course, as he grew older, he looked and acted just like the other sheep. Our unusual bonding was just a memory, but only to me.
I have not eaten lamb since.
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One of the rituals of growing up on a farm was to learn to shoot. My older brother took me under his wing and showed me the basics with the .22 rifle. My brother would take me hunting rabbit and squirrel with him. I will never forget the first rabbit I shot. I field dressed it and brought it home to my mother, who fried it and served it for dinner. I became a hunter just like my big brother. Life doesn’t get any better than that.
Later, when I got bigger, I was taught to shoot the 12-gauge pump action Remington shotgun. A heavy, formidable weapon that packed a big recoil. It could bring down a deer at short range. I only used it to shoot Pheasant or grouse, which my mother also cooked for dinner. I felt a great satisfaction to be able to put food on the table for the family.
Back to the moment when my mother woke me from a sound sleep. “Billy, your father is waiting.” I dragged myself downstairs and went to the kitchen.
My father was sitting at the table and, in his usual direct way, got right to the point. “The wild dogs are attacking the sheep. The dogs will chase the sheep, snapping at their soft belly until the sheep falls and roll over on it’s back. The dogs know that sheep can’t stand up once they were on their back. When the pack gets into a feeding frenzy, they’ll attack sheep after sheep, and they won’t stop until all the sheep are down. Then they will go back to each sheep and feast on the dying animals.
You have to protect the sheep, Billy. They are depending on you, Get the shotgun and shoot the dogs before they kill the entire flock. But, you have to be very, very careful because these dogs will kill anything that gets in their way.”
Shocked, I looked at my father.
Whoa!!! You want me to do what? Kill the dogs?
“You have to do it Billy. I can’t maneuver well enough with my hip to do it.
We can’t afford to lose the entire flock of sheep.”
“Well, ok. I guess. If you say so. I can do it. I think.
I went to the back closet and picked up the shotgun.
I walked off the back porch and loaded the magazine with 6 shotgun shells. At least I knew not to have a loaded weapon in the house.
The sky was pitch black with brilliant stars shining bright. I could see the Milky Way clearly. I just thinking how odd that the night could be so beautiful and peaceful, yet I knew something terrible was waiting.
As I went down the trail to the pasture, I could hear the bleating of the terrified sheep. It was so scary, it sounded like screaming. So many desperate noises intermixed with the fearsome snarling of a pack of frenzied wild dogs.
Then, I looked in the pasture. The bright, full moon illuminated a chaotic scene. There were 3 sheep lying on their backs. They were crying in an awful death rattle. Six crazed dogs were snarling, snapping and barking at the sheep. One sheep had a dog tearing at its exposed stomach. The remaining sheep were running in all directions, desperately trying to evade the dogs nipping at their bellies and legs, trying to knock them over.
I knew I had to stop more sheep from getting mauled. I pumped the slide on the shotgun, loading a 12-gauge shell into the chamber. I brought the weapon up to my shoulder. BOOM!! One dog down.
That first shot was the hardest. I was never this scared hunting with my brother.
I pumped the shotgun again, loading another shell into the firing chamber. BOOM!! The second dog went down.
I turned and saw that one of the dogs was feasting on one of the sheep. I pumped another shell in, and fired, BOOM!! Killing the savage mutt. That time it felt good.
The three remaining dogs scattered.
As I looked at the carnage in the moonlight, I realized that the three sheep that had been attacked were still alive, even though they were lying there with their intestines hanging out. One sheep had a broken leg. It was hanging from his body at an unnatural angle. Suddenly, I just stopped and froze. I had a terrible thought. Maybe one of them was Icky! My throat constricted and I thought I would cry. I couldn’t tell for sure if Icky was there, so I pushed that thought out of my mind. And anyway, this was no time for tears. I wasn’t done yet.
I had to approach each sheep and determine if it could be saved. I swear each one looked me in the eye while crying that awful noise, somewhere between a plea for help and begging for release.
I shot each one.
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When my mother finally saw me coming up the path she shouted “Billy”, are you all right?” I didn’t feel all right, but I didn’t want to burden her with my doubts. I said, ”Sure mom, no problem”. She said “ Good. I made you your favorite. Grilled cheese with a glass of milk. I knew you’ld be hungry” I didn’t know I was hungry until she said that.
As I walked back to the house, I was feeling conflicted. I was excited, full of adrenaline, but inside I felt a deep sadness. I knew I had to shoot the dogs. But the sheep too?
As I ate at the kitchen table, I told my parents what happened. I confessed that I wasn’t sure I should have shot the sheep. My father said, “You did the right thing Billy. They were dying and would have suffered tremendously”. A great burden was lifted from my shoulders when he said that.
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I often think back on that night. I find it hard to imagine what went through my parent’s minds. They had to send their 14-year-old son into the night with a shotgun. They could hear the shrieks and screams and gunshots, but they couldn’t do anything except wait. My father was probably sitting at the kitchen table, strong and stoic as ever, never showing what he was thinking, waiting quietly.
But the strongest image I will always carry with me is of my mother on the back porch waiting for me as I walked up the path to home. All the lights on the first floor of our house were on, like a lighthouse showing the way. She was silhouetted, standing there, worrying and waiting.
I will never forget that night.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
