My brother-in-law has a few black belly sheep and
lambs. A ewe give birth to two lambs a
few days last week but rejected one of them.
My nephews and niece have been playing mom and feeding him with a baby
bottle. They have named the lamb “Milky”. Needless to say, Milky has become quite
attached to them and acts more like a puppy than a lamb. He tries constantly to come inside the house
and prefers their company over that of the other lambs. He seems to think he is human!
I finally got a chance to visit Milky over the past
weekend and when I got there it was his feeding time. What a greedy little lamb! He devoured a
bottle of milk in a few seconds. He is so
adorable and I was reminded of a kid I had when I was a little boy. I had always liked sheep and goats and of
course even more so lambs and kids. When
I was growing up, the only way to obtain Halal mutton and chicken was to do the
slaughtering yourself. There was one
family who sold Halal beef so my mom would get her beef from them. I therefore grew up seeing sheep and chickens
being slaughtered on a routine basis.
Gujaratis however do not eat goat so we had never had reason to purchase
any. I persuaded my old man to get a kid
from this man who raised goats. He was
so cute and delightful and he would come in the house and act like he was a
pet, which in essence he was. I raised him till he became a huge goat with
large horns. However, not only was he
huge, but he was also very aggressive and no one could approach him except me. Tired of his butting everyone who went near
him, my parents decided it was time for him to go. One day, I came home from Islamic school- it
was school vacation so Islamic school was held in the mornings- and there was
no goat. I threw a fit! My old man had
gotten his friend who lived in the next street to come and kill the goat. He could not bear to do it himself. It took me many years to forgive them for
that and I refused to eat any lamb for fear that it may be actually be goat
disguised as lamb.
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