Talking To Suzy

I gently but purposefully pushed my hip into Fanny.   Slowly she moved like a tethered boat might, just enough for me to get between her and Lulu so I could brush her other side.

Her hair bunched onto the metal brush, a few loose strands floating on the still air. I sang quietly, Oh my donkeys, my beautiful donkeys, and Fanny leaned into me.

As I moved around her, I brushed the dried manure off her back legs, then spent longer on the spot just above her tail which she loves.

I felt Suzy’s presence before seeing her.  She stood so close my leg brushed against her.

The donkeys wait their turn to be brushed or give me a nudge if they get impatient.  But, not the sheep.

Suzy, with her pointy old hip bones and bulging spring belly visible under a layer of new wavey wool. She’s not thick-skinned, with a layer of fat like the twins who crave any kind of attention.  Her bones are close beneath her thin skin.

I put down the brush and rubbed Suzy’s back with my hands.  She even let me scratch her nose, the black hairs speckled with white.

She’d let me do this all day, I thought to myself.

Suzy, unlike most of my other sheep, has always let me scratch her back, but she’s never asked me to do it before.

Or maybe it’s just that I never heard her.