Alas, poor Longfellow!

Last night (after my last post) Flip dropped off two lambs. One of them is fairly small and black to boot. The other, rather large, ungainly and funny looking, has soremouth. I isolated it and began treating the poor creature. Flip assured me they were both male, wherupon I named the black one Skeeter and the white one Longfellow. I discovered this morning that Longfellow is not in fact, male. I have decided to keep her as Longfellow anyway, and dad suggested that we can call her 'Longfella' to make it more feminine.

I hadn't been able to get her to drink, which was expected since she's a bit old to just be getting on the bottle. She'd been nursing her mom, previously, but as is the story with Skeeter as well, the ewe disappeared, leaving the lamb to fend for itself. They were both pretty weak when they arrived. I was able to get Skeeter to drink his bottle, but not Longfellow. However, since Longfellow is a bit older and was eating hay and drinking water quite well, I wasn't terribly worried.

Suddenly, this afternoon, both of them took a dramatic turn for the worse. Longfellow did not eat or drink, and was too weak to even stand. Skeeter, although he could stand, did not drink his bottle, or even eat the hay that I gave him. On my mom's advice, I called Stephanie (a good friend who's good with this stuff) and asked her to help me tube them (feed them by means of a stomach tube). We did so, and put them both on penicillin as both of them are showing signs of pneumonia as well as everything else.

Skeeter is livelier already and managed to run away from me fairly quickly as I went to put him back in the pen. Longfellow, however, is not. I'm really worried about her, and from the way she looks, her chances aren't looking too good. However, where there's life, there's hope, and sometimes you get pleasant surprises.

Also, dad gave me his old cameras for my photography class. As long as they don't have to be digital, I'm in good shape. The Minolta just needs batteries (and I'd like to get a wide angle lens for it) and the Olympus needs the shutter fixed because it sticks and I'd have to take the lens off to fix it after every shot. Other than that, all I need is film and it's good to go.

Dad and I also drove the Parowan loop today, to give me a bit of driving practice. That was fun.

Hm. Yes. More updates tomorrow.
Alas... poor Longfellow!
--Anna Grace