马蒂有只小羔.docVIP

11、Marty Had a Little Lamb It was lambing1 season. The neighbors phone call brought my dad and me rushing to their barn to help with a difficult delivery. We found a lamb whose mother had died while giving birth. The orphan was weak, cold, still shrouded2 with the placenta3, and walking impossibly on tall and wobbly4 legs. I bundled him up5 in my coat and put him in the pickup truck for the short ride back to our small family farm in rural Idaho. We drove through our barnyard, passing cows, pigs, chickens, dogs and cats, but Dad headed straight for the house. I didnt know it yet, but that lamb was destined to become more than an ordinary sheep, just as I was destined to be more than an ordinary seven—year-old boy--I was about to become a mommy! Cradling6 the lamb in my arms, I brought him into the kitchen. While Mom and I wiped the lamb down with dry towels, Dad stoked7 the furnace8 with coal so that the newborn would have warming heat to drive away the cold. As I petted his curly little head, the tiny creature tried sucking on my fingers. He was hungry! We slipped a nipple9 over a pop bottle full of warm milk and stuck it into his mouth. He latched on10, and instantly his jaws pumped like a machine, sending the nourishing milk to his stomach. As soon as he started eating, his tail started wagging fu riously11. Then suddenly his eyes popped open for the first time, and he looked me right in the eye. He gave me that miraculous moment-of-birth look that every mother knows. The look that says, unmistakably,“ Hello Mommy! Im yours, youre mine, aint life fine!” 　　A young boy with tousled12 blond hair and thick black glasses doesnt look much like a sheep. But this little lamb didnt care in the least. The important thing was that he had a mom--me! 　　I named him Henry and, just like the nursery rhyme13, everywhere that Marty went, the lamb was sure to go. The instant bond we shared that first day turned into the same deep kind of connection that develops between mothe