Jon Katz
Slate.com
I shot my lamb, and I wish my neighbors had shot theirs, too, said Jon Katz. I raise sheep on my upstate New York farm, and last year I gave three lambs to a couple who had just moved up from the suburbs. Over the winter, one of my lambs and one of theirs took sick with the same mysterious infection. Both grew weak and disoriented, their fleece peeling off in patches. Knowing the old farmyard axiom, Sick Sheep Seldom Survive, I carried my lamb behind the barn, told him how sorry I was, and shot him twice in the back of the head with my .22. He died instantly. My neighbors, though, have a more contemporary urban sensibility about animals. Doting on their lamb as if he were a family member, they moved him into a spare bedroom, feeding him fresh hay and nutritional supplements. But months later, he still looks like a concentration-camp sheep. I dont question my neighbors motives, but they merely are prolonging the animals suffering. Im afraid their efforts have more to do with their own emotional gratification than with whats truly in the best interests of the lamb.