Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Doug almost gets dipped

Doug and I took some time out the other morning to help with sheep dipping. It was a messy job. Within a few minutes we were covered in organophosphate spray as the sheep leaped or stumbled off the ramp, splashed through the dipping trough and shook themselves dry in the every-ewe-for-herself mayhem. The first sheep sank to the bottom only to surface when the crowd thinned. The top sheep tried to run for safety across the heads of her comrades.

Doug and I alternated between two jobs. The first job was dunking each panicked sheep paddling through the trough. We had to make sure each sheep was completely submerged. No dry heads allowed. The other job was working the gates between the draining pens and then shooing the sheep out to the paddock.

At one point I heard a yelp in the midst of the baaing and turned to catch Doug sprawled over the dipping trough, his feet on the near side and his hands on the far side. He'd slip and almost dipped himself. The rest of the "professional" ranchers seemed to enjoy the spectacle as much as I did.

A little later we had a frantic moment as one ewe thrashed madly trying to unleash herself. Somehow she had gotten the rope on the plug in the bottom of the trough wrapped around her leg. By the time we freed her, she had literally pulled the plug on the dipping trough. All of us stood and watched the valuable chemicals draining away. There in the bottom of the trough was a little pesticide-logged trout. Doug ran and found a bucket in the shearing shed. As we refilled the trough with fresh stream water Doug caught one more trout. We were thrilled. We had wanted trout for our pond.

By lunchtime, Doug and I both remembered some pressing work that we needed to get done at home and said good-bye to the dipping crew. We headed home with our two trout sloshing in a bucket between my legs, thankful to only be occasional, part-time farm hands.

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