Laying with the lamb

It is a strange thing to cuddle up with your food while it is still breathing. To share a nap, and a moment's contentment in the grass at the golden end of a long work day. Saag's ears are back, his eyes partially closed, and is relaxedly chewing his cud. His body is warm and has the wonderful lanolin smell of sheep. He is oddly affectionate for a "prey" animal, but the sheep we keep have come to trust us, and his pawing at my lap with his hooves and settling down next to me is probably also part of missing his mama--India--from whom he and his brother Curry (harbinger names) have been weaned a couple of days before and is in the east pasture. I look at him looking at me so peacefully and wonder if I am violating some code of Nature. I know very well his fate has already been decided as "food" (he and the other boy lambs have been "reserved" for slaughter time), but for the moment I can do nothing more than savor the feeling of this woolly creature completely at ease laying his head on my leg, accepting me as one of the flock.