Having an active fantasy life is a pretty amazing thing. Now that I’m doing so much armchair travelling, it seems that the weight of the world is getting lighter by the day. That said, I haven’t managed to escape reality entirely, as happened recently upon the death of one of our old sheep. 

Melpomene, or Mel as she soon came to be known, left us quietly a couple of weeks ago having lived a long and happy life. When Sasha returned from the barn chores all too early that day, I read on his face the expression that over time I’ve come to know so well - another of the old animals had died. 

He found Mel kushed in front of the little sheep house where she had fallen quietly into an eternal sleep. Still warm to the touch, a light dusting of snow on her back, she had what we’ve come to think of here as a very good death. Other than a slowing of her gait in recent months, there had been no sign whatsoever that she would be leaving us anytime soon.

I write about this now because it is snowing and Sasha is away getting better so I’m the one who’s just come in from doing the barn chores, handing out pats and peanuts to our motley crew of aging animals along the way. My new Italian fantasy life is definitely a psychic godsend during these dark days of winter and I really am committed to the project I’ve begun. 

Even so, no matter how you slice it, there are still shining moments here on this old farm when there’s nowhere else on earth I’d rather be.

It seems that all I think about nowadays is either blue food for Sasha’s film gig or his pending appearance in Small Claims Court where he is being frivolously sued by the photographer, Sherman Hines. Both played a part in our weekend because it was the only time that Sasha could be here at home and that we’d have any chance at all to get caught up on anything. So, while dipping cold cuts and cheese slices in blue food dye, we reviewed the legal situation while toasting our nephew’s twenty seventh birthday with pink champagne. I guess you could say that we got a lot of bang out of the weekend buck.

In my own small world, my maiden effort at blogging, Sherman’s Behind,  apparently got itself noticed by another blogger last week, someone who writes about marketing and communication, who has suggested he’d like to include it in an article about “how the internet makes the David and Goliath story obsolete.” His readership, he tells me, is about five thousand people, but so far nothing further has happened on that front. 

In the particular situation detailed in my blog, David has yet to score a victory and Goliath keeps coming on strong, so I’m not sure I can agree with the premise anyway just yet. In the meanwhile Sasha has started a  new Facebook group called People Supporting Sasha in his Claim against Sherman Hines, so the saga continues in that universe as well. As fascinated as I am by social networking and the power of the internet to disseminate information rapidly, I am beginning to find the entire thing quite fatiguing intellectually and would far rather focus my own attentions elsewhere. If I didn’t believe so strongly in this particular struggle, I’d have packed it in a long time ago. 

When I’m not reflecting on the vagaries of the legal system. I am still enjoying myself quite a lot these days. One bit of happy news is that yet another broody hen in another habitat entirely, seems to be sitting on another clutch of eggs. This time I had the wit to turn to my friend and mentor, Ron Rogerson, of Oaklawn Farm Zoo, for some advice on how to achieve a happier outcome this time around. According to Ron, it is likely that the previous hen had, at some point in the past, eaten an egg or two and that the behaviour just resurfaced again in the barn. Cannibalism can apparently lie dormant sometimes .

With a new opportunity before us, this time we are planning to take Ron’s suggestions and handle the situation a bit differently. We will, by night, remove the broody hen and her eggs  to an apple box or bushel basket which we will then cover with a small blanket or a towel. This we will remove again to a secure and private habitat in which no other birds will be present and the hen and eggs will be left in peace. Apparently, once uncovered, the hen will hop in and out of the box (or basket) for food and water and the eggs should be quite secure until they hatch. Unless she’s another cannibal, that is. 

If that happens, we are definitely giving up.

At my age I generally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about raging hormones, so the last couple of days have hit me like so much ice water in the face. It turns out that sometimes wildly raging hormones are a fact of life at our place whether I want to be dealing with them or not. 

Normally, when I do the barn chores, everything transpires according to a well orchestrated plan. Morning is the part of my day that I normally consider quite contemplative, reflecting what I hold to be a silent and mindful relationship between a human being and the denizens of several other nations who somehow interdepend. Each bird and animal is aware of the order of business, and I usually arrive to find them all patiently waiting for their part in our shared routine.

Chicken and turkey habitats are checked first for food and fresh water, then eggs are collected and put in a plastic bucket to be taken afterward to the house. If there’s a broody hen in the process of laying, I come back a little later in the day.

In the barn, our “odd couple,” John and Poncho, are dealt with right away. A ram and a male llama respectively, they constitute, apart from Sasha, the only unaltered males on the premises and have somehow managed to live in harmony for years. John, who is a messy, almost toothless eater, needs to be given a small ration of mash made from pelleted hay soaked in water. Poncho, a large gentle creature when not in close proximity to the females, receives (in addition to his hay) a small handful of grain and a stroke on the silky fibre of his neck. The two of them sometimes jump and tussle while this happens, but are generally more interested in the food than in making trouble for me.

Our three geldings are fed next and constitute no difficulty. Large greedy animals, they normally get straight to the hay. The female herd and the donkey, always eager for a nosh,  jolt and jockey one another for position at the mangers but settle easily once their food has arrived. The three skinny llamas who get extra "groceries" step smartly out of their stalls and into the centre of the barn where bright yellow buckets of grain await. The donkey, the only one here of her species, stands eagerly at the gate assertively looking for the small handful of grain she receives as a special treat. After all these things have been done I can set about the daily task of shoveling manure.

Yesterday, however, did not go according to Hoyle. Of course, if I’d been thinking clearly I might have anticipated this, but sometimes I confess that my head is somewhere else. The Russian steppes, perhaps, or somewhere in Peru. At any rate, while daydreaming about the wonders of springtime, I totally lost sight of the rather serious practical implications this season can also hold for me.

Yesterday, I made my first big mistake of the season by letting both small flocks of our chickens out to range, as opposed to just the rooster and three hens who live in the barn without access to a run. I knew better, of course, but  I fell victim (and not for the first time) to the sort of magical thinking that throws reason and experience to the wind.

For Sasha and me as stewards, there has always been an intellectual conflict between the notion of confinement for purposes of protection and the argument that quality of life is at its utmost only when creatures are allowed to be free.  Yesterday, in my head, these concerns were nowhere to be found as I thought only of the green grass and the dirt baths that the chickens could enjoy along with the brightness of the sunlight and the freshness of the air. The matter of spring hormones never crossed my mind and when they surfaced, my once easy routine spun rapidly out of control.

Almost from the second the two roosters encountered one another in the sunlight, they poised themselves for battle, and they continued to battle unremittingly  for the largest part of the morning. Neck feathers fanned out, they flew at one another ferociously, easily eluding all my clumsy attempts to restrain them. So vicious and lengthy was the combat that I actually came to understand why people bet on cock fights, although had I been the one making the bets, I’d certainly have lost. The large, handsome barred rock, by far the heavier of the birds, took a sorry beating before I could round him up and return him to the safety of captivity. It was awful and I hated myself for being so dumb.

To add insult to injury, when I entered the barn, John and Poncho were nowhere to be seen. Bad sign. A normal day would have found the ram standing upright against the stall gate, eagerly awaiting his food with Poncho framed patiently in the doorway behind him. Yesterday I found the pair of them outdoors in the adjacent paddock, where they had breached the fencing to graze happily on the fresh green grass growing there. 

Although this behaviour might strike others as "cute" and while the image may seem bucolic and benign, for me it is as loaded as hell. Sasha and I are almost fanatical about never allowing Poncho into any paddock on a contiguous fence line with that of the female herd. The reason? Hormones, of course.

A large male llama in rut, while a stunning thing to behold, snorts and draws himself up like a monarch, commanding the attention of every female on the place. It is for a very good reason that the male of the camelid species is called a "macho" and only a matter of time before he, or one (or more) of the ladies, will draw near enough to jump the fence and embark on what comes naturally. Once in progress, this activity is too hard and sometimes too dangerous to stop. Although there is a drug we can administer should breeding actually occur, it is best to prevent the situation in the first place. We do not need any young.

Because I have seen this happen before, I was able to move quickly to sequester the aggressively flirty females and to shore up the fencing well enough to serve until Sasha returns on the weekend. Which is not to suggest that there weren't a few hairy moments along the way. In the presence of a potential mate, these snorting four hundred pound girls were really raring to go.

Now that the excitement is over and I can reflect on the events of the day, I realize that all of these situations will have to be managed in a better way, insuring that quality of life is not compromised too much. For the chickens I have just ordered some portable netting that will enable them to enjoy the pleasures of the land while keeping the adversarial roosters separate from one another. Whoever invented the stuff was a genius.

As for the glamorous Poncho and his potential harem, there might be no sex in the offing, but there are plenty of green non-contiguous paddocks over whose fence lines they can longingly gaze. It'll have to do.

Sometimes the life of the mind has to take a back seat to the life of the heart. As I write this, one of our beautiful female llamas is very ill and the odds in favour of recovery are unclear. 

There is an old saying that “a down llama is a dead llama," but we know that this isn’t necessarily so. However, Ceiara has just gone down and seems to have little if any sensation in both her front and hind legs. We found her this morning at feeding time, lying on her side with her limbs spayed out around her.

Ataxia of this nature is the usual result of trauma to the spinal cord caused by parasitic infection. Since all the animals received the appropriate wormers at the appropriate time, we are mystified as to the cause. We are following a treatment protocol developed at Ohio State University and working with our vet to give the necessary care. Just as with human patients, sores can be the uncomfortable byproduct of lengthy periods of recumbency just as limbs tend to atrophy when they are not exercised. So for the next many days we have our work cut out for us. Food, medications and injections, physiotherapy and lots and lots of love.