I say "at last count," because Sophie, our third ewe, remains enormously pregnant. She is bulging like a barrel about to burst. Sophie, who is likely carrying triplets, looks as broad as she is long; and she is dragging around an udder that is, well, Dolly Partonesque. I go out to the shed three times a day, hoping each time to find more lambs. No luck. There stands Sophie, other mothers’ lambs bouncing around her, her head down and miserable. I wish I could do more than say, "Poor baby!"

Long-time readers of this column may be muttering, "Wait! He shouldn’t be getting lambs in February. They usually come in May, right?"

Yes, that’s true, friends. And that would be the case if the pregnancies had followed on the visit of David the rent-a-ram, who was with us back in November.

His visit should have meant lambs in five months, sometime in late April. But, as it turns out, David’s work had already been done for him, back in August.

Did I hear a gasp? Did someone just whisper, "But who?" O.K., here’s the plain truth. Last year’s lambs had among them a couple of little rams. And before they went off to summer camp at the end of August, those rams managed to get a next generation going. Yep. Shades of Oedipus Rex.

And, yes, a better shepherd would have prevented that. Within the appropriate number of days after those ramlets’ births, he would have applied the elastrator, which puts am elastic band around the begetting equipment. Somehow this shepherd missed the time for doing that. And so he went through the summer, hoping for the best. But the best was not to be.

Those rams, randy as teenagers by last August, followed nature’s lead; and here I am, tending lambs in sub-zero cold. And waiting for Sophie to worsen the problem_in an overnight snowstorm, probably, with gale-driven drifts blocking the sheep shed door.

But if our flock is the cause of social embarrassment, not so another four-legger at our place. I mean Blue. He continues to advance in agility training and now can weave among poles, rush through tunnels, and clear obstacles with the best of them. His next class, I think, will have him tap dancing and performing simple card tricks.

But last week revealed still another talent in this triple-threat dog. He may be a potential therapist. [an error occurred while processing this directive]