Environmental Talk

“On the day I was born .. The nurses all gathered ’round .. And they gazed in wide wonder ….”

There was a lamb born today in Sunderland, England.

It must be a slow news day over in Britain, because somehow this event made it into the afternoon paper.

The headline to the story read: Lamb Born as Mother Nature Confuses Autumn for Spring

So, it could be the story is just part of the ongoing effort by the media to tie everything in the world to global warming.

It’s like that game where you link everyone in Hollywood to Kevin Bacon … except nobody’s proposing we restrict new Kevin Bacon movies back to the levels they were in the 1980s.

Although, now that you mention it….

Anyway. Back to the story —

It takes a female sheep three to four months to give birth to a lamb. Most lambs are born early in the year but it’s rare to have a lamb born right before Thanksgiving. As the article noted, Farmer Will Weightman was “stunned” to come out to the barn and find one of the ewes with her baby.

Farmer Will explained, “It’s very unusual … sometimes you get lambs in late January, early February but hardly ever in November. It has to be because of climate change.”

You have to admit, this is pretty weird. Farmer Will doesn’t know enough biology to realize the sheep was pregnant but all of a sudden he’s got a science as complex as global climatology figured out.

The article continues, “The lamb, named Breeze after it was discovered on a windy day, is quite a miracle, and Will has hardly ever seen anything like it.”

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the city, but I think it’s creepy to give a name to an animal you could be serving with rosemary and mint jelly a couple weeks from now.

Will speculated on how the pregnancy may have occurred. “Hercules in the pen nearby must have snuck over the fence, done his business and then snuck back again.”

That seems like a perfectly logical explanation until you look real close and notice the lamb has Will’s smile.

I’ll bet you ten bucks Mrs. Farmer Will was away for a couple of weeks visiting her mother back in July.

Why does everyone consider it so unusual that Hercules might have gotten horny in the middle of summer? It’s beach season and you’ve got all the ewes parading around in bikinis with their Brazilian waxes. They’re practically asking for it. A studly ram buys them a couple of drinks and it’s only a matter of time before nature take it’s course.

Big deal. Hercules climbed over a fence to get laid — like none of us have ever done anything like that before.

Back in high school, I once climbed fourteen stories up a fire escape to get with Mary Ellen Boccichio.

And she didn’t even shave her legs that week.

While we’re at it, can we lighten up on the hyperbole a little bit here and stop referring to the birth of a lamb as a “miracle?”

Animals pretty much give birth all the time. They usually do it in a field and, amazingly, manage to do it without an epidural.

Even more amazing, the birth is totally covered by their insurance without a co-pay.

When a reporter starts tossing around terms like “miracle,” it makes it sound like he can’t figure out why a farm animal giving birth in a barn hasn’t been made into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy yet.

What were there, like, 30 million lambs born last year? If something that happens 30 million times a year is a miracle, then guys watching porn on the Internet has to be the modern-day equivalent of Moses parting the Red Sea.

What would really be a miracle was if there’d been a star overhead and three wise ducks showed up bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh.

But I think that’s already been done on The Muppet Show.

global warming, climate change, lamb, lamb chops, Muppets, Grey’s Anatomy, Hercules, Brazilian wax,