A 'bum' lamb was our 1989 Easter miracle

It was cold, too cold that Easter morning in 1989 when winter nudged one last time at the strip of dryland that brushes against the badlands on Montana's eastern border.

I was in a hurry that morning with the usual hubbub of a holiday morn - Easter dresses to iron for our two girls (then 4 and 2), pies to bake for company coming later that day, last-minute housekeeping to attend to.

We owned a hobby farm back then, and morning chores beckoned. There were ducks and chickens to feed, eggs to pick, hogs to slop, goats to milk, horses to feed. I look back now and wonder how we ever survived the menagerie.

It was also the year my husband, who was finding his inner farmer at the time, went wild with "bum" lambs, newborns either rejected by their mothers or those whose mothers simply don't have enough milk to nurse them.

Since we owned the meat processing plant in Sidney, he was well-connected with farmers from Trotters to Richey (for those of you who don't know Eastern Montana, that's a wide swath of land) and farmers far and wide gave us their "bums" that spring.

As I swung open the barn door, juggling an arm full of milk bottles, I noticed a solitary lamb in one corner. The temperature had dipped below zero and he was separated from the rest of the flock, whose collective body heat had pulled them through the unusually cold night.

I thought the lone lamb was dead, then heard a faint bleat. When I felt its thin body, it was partially frozen, but it was still breathing. I've never forgotten the feel of that stiff flesh under a soft coat of wool.

I wasn't sure how many minutes separated life and death for the infant animal.

Time was running out for the little guy, so I scooped him up and ran to the house, where we thawed the tiny lamb out in a bathtub of warm water. He was lethargic and unresponsive, but we kept massaging the lamb's legs and body as the day went on.

In between the warm-water therapy sessions, we glazed the ham, baked the pies and got things ready for a house full of company. We weren't sure how to tell our visitors we had a dying lamb in the bathtub.

The thought crossed our mind to quarantine the critter in the master bath, which wouldn't be used by visitors, and then simply not mention the dilemma to anyone. But all I could imagine was the lamb dying and one of the young children finding it.

So we came clean to our guests and explained the lamb saga. Most of our visitors had farm connections, and bringing in frost-bitten calves or lambs isn't uncommon. I can remember a newborn calf on more than one occasion recuperating from a frigid night next to our wood stove when I was little.

After an Easter egg hunt and a children's romp with some of the livelier barnyard animals, we sat down to Easter dinner. Midway through the meal, the bleating started. It was our lamb, back from the dead, our own resurrection, if you will, on Easter Sunday.

The kids raced to the bathroom and found the frisky fellow up and jumping around. For those of us with Christian upbringings, it wasn't hard to see the symbolism in our own Easter miracle.

We took photographs of our Easter lamb. He was our personal blessing that day, and a reminder that miracles, however small, do happen.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com