Lambing

Hills and gullies and roadside paddocks brimful of new life, large eyes, spindly legs, kicks and frolicks and flickering tails as thousands of knobbly heads bunt their mothers' sides.

Sometimes, pale little shells where lambs should be, deflated and flat on the cold green grass. Perhaps a ewe standing guard, head high in futile defiance against some unseen force that has sucked the shape and life from her child. Time and hunger and an audience of black crows wait patiently for her capitulation.

And then there are the ones in-between, stumbling beside their mothers, flailing their tails at her flank but without the strength to raise their heads and feed. Backs arched, feet increasingly unsteady, their only joy in their mothers' nuzzling and a patch of warm sunshine when they can no longer stand, they move steadily away from here.

Oh dear.
I should know better than to leave the house today. Lambing and Jodi Picoult and pregnancy hormones are not a good mix.