The first time I saw him, he was cuddled up with another lamb in the front seat of a car. He was just a few days old. He was tiny and had brown tipped ears. He travelled up to Lefty’s Place that night with his little lamb friend, myself and my friend. We were only supposed to look after them for the weekend to give their foster carer a bit of a rest. They arrived on Wednesday and were scheduled to go back on Saturday night, but as soon as J lifted Greedy out of the car, I could tell we would have problems. The constant “oh, aren’t they gorgeous” made me instantly think that we now had two more animal residents…..and I was correct.
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So we had two little 3 day old lambs living in our back room who needed names. One grabbed his bottle with such passion that his name became “Greedy”. The other boy found every single way to get out of his pen, he pushed, he jumped, he wriggled and climbed his way out. He was trouble, so his name became “Trouble”.
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These two little lambs were found one cold night in mid June, 2013. Two rescuers found them near death in an icy field in Victoria. They had been abandoned by their mothers because their mothers could not look after the twins and triplets they had just given birth to. Ewes find it difficult to feed more than one lamb, especially in the icy cold of a Victorian winter. Two little lambs between 0-1 day old lay in a paddock waiting for death until two rescuers picked them up and secured them a future in this world.
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About two days after the boys arrived, Greedy stopped taking his bottle. We rushed him to the vet and he was found to have a severe infection due to not receiving colustrum from his mother. We thought he was going to die, but Greedy is a sheep who fights to live and he definitely did just that.
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At 5 months old, Greedy and Trouble were living outside with the big boys and happily enjoying life. One Friday afternoon I got a frantic call from J saying that he arrived home and couldn’t find Greedy. There was no sign. I rushed up from work and searched all night and all the next day. We searched high and low. But there was no sign of him. He had just vanished. I left to go back to work on the Saturday night quite distressed, leaving a broken man behind who was still searching into the night. At 12am he rang me yelling “I got him. I got him” He had found Greedy stuck under a huge prickle bush. His back leg had been caught in the fork of a tree and he just hadn’t been able to shift it. J only found Greedy because he heard Greedy’s desperate cries. You see, Greedy had started calling out in distress because a fox had started eating his face. The fox ate off all of his lips and nose before J found him. With blood pouring from his face, Greedy was carried back to the house and nursed through the night until the vet arrived. Our vet patched him up and told us he would be ok as long as we nursed him through and prevented infection the best we could.
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It was a long journey, but Greedy healed, both physically and emotionally. For quite some time there he was terrified and not his usual, sweet self.
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Greedy has since lost his brown tipped ears, but still has a twinkle in his eyes. These days Greedy is a big, beautiful, friendly sheep who is like a dog. He follows you, comes when he is called and loves a pat…and he is still the greediest of them all!
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Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally
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