A story about a little sister by my daddy
Even little knobby kneed kids do some growing up before they are out of the first grade. Take Mary Jane for instance. She was our kid sister who was born ten years after the rest of us.
“Mary, Maary!’ Mother was calling Mary Jane.
The wind whispered through the fir trees behind the house. A rooster called his harem to a worm he’d scratched from the ground. But no answer came from my six-year-old sister. Not that it mattered. She was bad medicine to a teen-ager. Besides, she always showed up in time for supper.
“Call the dog,” Ellen said.
For being another girl, and two years older than I was, Ellen was pretty smart.
Mother called again. “Jerry.”
Our collie was named after some guy Ellen thought was cute.
“Here, Jerry.”
“Yap. Yap,” the dog answered from behind the hen house. At eating time, he didn’t need to be called twice.
Jerry materialized loping down the hill. Like Ellen predicted, baby sister was behind him, and Gangly Legs was following her. Gangly Legs was a bum lamb. Sheep can get mixed up. But, when it came to confusion, this one was a champion. He didn’t even know he was a sheep. He thought that he was a brother to a collie dog and that Mary Jane was his mother. Imagine having a stringy haired kid for a mother! How mixed up can something get?
Of course a bum lamb is mixed up to start with. You see, a bum is a lamb so ugly that his mother won’t claim him. Or, at least, that’s what I told Little Sister when Uncle Gus brought the lamb to her.
Mary didn’t accept what I said. “Ugly, nothing!” she retorted. “Uncle Gus said he was a twin, and, besides, you wish he’d have brought him to you.”
She fastened a floppy nipple on a pop bottle and fed the motherless lamb some milk. Old Gangly Legs clung to the bottle and worked his jaws overtime. He bumped with his nose when the milk didn’t come fast enough to please him, which was all the time. His legs shook and he panted and chewed. His stomach puffed up like a balloon. Flop, flop, flop – he wiggled his tail steadily, and when the milk was gone he ran over to Jerry, grabbed one of his ears and chewed on it. His tail kept time with is jaws.
“Look,” Mary Jane squealed. “He’s still hungry.”
Fortunately for the dog, the hunger dissipated, and both lay down on the lawn.
“He thinks he’s a dog,” I said.
“He knows what he is. He’s a cute lamb.” Mary stomped into the house.
I guess in a way she was right for a skinny legged six-year-old. Anyway, Little Sister had a lamb to raise. The critter thrived on the attention he received. One thing for sure, he was lucky. Lots of lambs would die if someone didn’t take special care of them.
Like I told Mary, “A mother sheep will just walk away and leave a lamb if she doesn’t like his looks.” Sometimes a ewe (lady sheep) will give birth to two or three lambs and have only enough milk for one. Besides, some old ewes just give up and die right after they’ve had a young one. Like I said – a long necked lamb would make any smart mother kick the bucket. Luckily Gangly Legs had Mary Jane for a mother, and she wasn’t in any danger. She thought that the lamb was beautiful.
He thought he was a dog and spent his spare time jumping in and out of the doghouse and chewing on Jerry’s ears. That year we had a crazy place guarded by a dog-eared dog.
“If he chewed on me, I’d bite him,” I said.
“That’s because you’re not as nice as Jerry,” Mary Jane answered.
But who wants to be nice if a chewed ear is the reward you get?
Summer changed to fall. The stupid lamb was still around – all eighty pounds of him. He wasn’t gangly anymore, but he still thought he was a dog. Even Mother said that if he’d only eat dog food he’d probably take to running cars. But one day all that changed. That was the day Uncle Gus’ sheep flock ran away.
The sheep had crawled through the fence before. But this day, when they got out, they made a beeline for our house. Old Jerry barked three panicked yelps and made a dive for the doghouse. I guess he thought his ears were gone for sure. Instead of following him, Gangly Legs stood staring at the sheep as they filed into the yard.
A stupid faced old ewe and a plump lamb stepped away from the others. The ewe walked up to Gangly Legs. She smelled his nose as if to say, “You’re my long lost lamb. You’d better come home.”
The plump lamb bumped Gangly with his head. “Brother, I’m tougher than you are.”
Knobby kneed Mary Jane stared big-eyed as her pet nuzzled against the old ewe and started nibbling on her ear.
“See,” Mary Jane said. “He knew he was a sheep all the time.”
I started to explain that Gangly probably thought that the sheep was another dog, but just then Uncle Gus came walking up the road. He was looking for his sheep.
“Come on woolies,” he said.
The stupid flock turned and followed him home.
Gangly Legs went with them. For a minute I thought that Mary Jane was going to lose her cool. She puffed up like a bullfrog ready to explode as she watched her lamb go. Then she stared me straight in the eye. “I raised the biggest lamb of the whole bunch,” she said. Then it came to me that maybe a six-year-old can think some grown up thoughts – like a mother thinks when her children grow up and leave home……I don’t know. But for a few minutes my little sister looked big and seemed super smart for a skinny, knobby kneed girl.
Knobby kneed little sister