Tiny Ruby

a story of loss

We lost a sheep last week. A little red-brown sheep born of our flock two springs ago, with a white snip down her nose and little oval, pointed ears that stuck straight out at right angles from behind her light, amber eyes. Ruby. Tiny Ruby was her name. Lost to the weather.

We find her tucked under the bracken that’s the same flame colour as her fleece, cold and stiff, eyes glazed, long gone. He heaves her hard body over his shoulders, carries her, heavier than she looked, he struggles, stumbles, across the flooded, knee-deep bog and up the hill. Drops her into the boot of the car, lined with plastic feed bags, with a grunt and a thump. I’m sorry, Ruby. Too late. We should have carried her up yesterday while a glimmer of life still flickered faintly in those light, amber eyes. But it was dark when he came home, it’s a tough trek to carry a sheep on foot across the hill over treacherous ground, and it was already too late, I knew. I had done all I could.

He rings me from the knacker’s ya…