Some of you may be familiar with Primo, the lamb that Becky and I (and our youngest daughter Zoe) and Marc and Kris nursed back to health last spring as a COVID quarantine project, after he forgot how to walk due to what we think is a vitamin deficiency. This spring, we got a couple of new lambs, courtesy of our neighbour with a penchant for animal husbandry. We named them Butch & Sundance, after trying out multiple twin name combinations, like Peanut Butter & Jam, Archie & Jughead, etc. Last year’s twins are named Pebbles and Bam-Bam (their mom was Wilma of course — she has passed on to her eternal reward) and Primo’s brothers are Dopey and Big Red. And then there’s Blue Ivy, whose mom we named Beyonce because she had curly hair that hung in her eyes (ironically, she has the least-musical bleat of any of the sheep).
Unlike Primo, our new twins came out March 9th and seemed healthier within hours than Primo seemed days or even weeks after being born. Butch and Sundance were walking around within minutes, jumping within days, and after a week or so were doing acrobatic jumps by using their mom as a jumping-off point — springing up onto her back and then kicking themselves into the air from there. They have probably tripled in size by this point, and we have even convinced them to accept crackers and other snacks from our hands — Sundance even figured out how to get his entire head out through the gaps in the wire fence, so his mom wouldn’t keep grabbing all the good snacks. Clearly he is a genius.