Our tiny bottle lamb is really starting to thrive. The pitter patter (really more like ticker-tacker) of little lamb hooves is a constant background sound in the house these days, and Bounce seems to grow more adorable by the minute.

While a sheep will never behave like a dog in the house – bringing newspapers or getting potty-trained – a lamb that sees a human as its mother will exhibit some very winsome behaviors. For one, a lamb (except when asleep) will always be directly underfoot, which can be quite dangerous for the lamb and mother-figure both! But that clinginess can be awfully sweet once you learn to accommodate for it. There is truth to the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day, which was against the rule. It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school.” If Mary had bottled that lamb, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would have followed her onto the bus, into the school, and right into the cafeteria at lunchtime.

Bounce shares feeding time with friends, Sunny the dog and Cracker the cat. Everyone likes a slurp of goat’s milk!

Eli and Emma get love from some bottled kids in a previous year.

Though I haven’t taken Bounce outside yet, in previous years I’ve had bottle babies grow to be my faithful companions while I traverse the farm doing chores and garden work all summer long, or until I felt they were able to hold their own in the herd. In fact, sheep and goat bottle babies are such good company – curious, verbal and very gentle about staying in touch by periodically nuzzling the back of my legs with their noses – that I’ve had some I take out of the herd to be with me when I’m working, and just put back in the pasture when I go inside. A sheep, given the opportunity, will never really separate from its mother, actually. Even in a large herd, sheep tend to cluster in family groups, with the grown lambs tagging along behind the mom indefinitely.

Lena, Bounce’s mom, was one of my faithful companions in the gardens the spring she was a bottle baby.

This deep connection to the ewe has important survival advantages. As babies, the lambs stick like glue to their moms and imitate everything they do, and so learn what is good to eat and where is safe to go. A lamb that is a few hours old will orient itself parallel with the ewe’s face, and when she dips her mouth in water, it will, too. The lamb will sample corn when she eats and nibble hay when she does. When we have house lambs, we have to stick their faces in water and then in corn to make it stick to their wet lips and hope that they’ll lick it off and develop a taste for it.

Surely it’s indicative of the way I spend my winter days inside that Bounce has developed the habit of nibbling on my computer when I hold it on my lap, and nibbling the books that litter my coffee table when I’m not sitting where he can reach me. When I’m up and working in the kitchen, he is often standing with one hoof on my foot. If he’s hungry, he paws at my foot instead. Most sheep don’t really enjoy being petted, but Bounce likes to have his horn buds – tiny indentations in the fur on his head where he’ll eventually grow horns – rubbed hard, with a finger pressing into each one. And when he’s asleep and I walk into the room, he inevitably wakes up and calls out with a sweet, hoarse “Maaaaa!” It’s hard to imagine a mother that would walk away from this little guy, though I confess that when he wants to be fed at 4 in the morning, my main motivation in answering his whining is to make it stop!

Bounce takes a break from book-chewing to curl up for a nap.

Bounce snuggles Eli for a horn-bud rub.