The Art of Being Emily - Katie MacAlister Page 0,90
saying hi). “Are you ready to dose the sheep?”
“Sure, been looking forward to it all day.” Yes, yes, that was an outright lie, but it was a kind lie, so it doesn't count. “So...um...what do we do for this dosing thingy, give them a pill or something?”
He looked at me kind of funny. “You've never seen a sheep drenched?”
“Oh, sure I have. It was raining yesterday, and they really looked soaked.”
He started to laugh, then put his arm around my shoulders as we walked to the rear of the barn. HE PUT HIS ARM AROUND ME!!! That means he likes me, right? Or do you think it was a sympathy thing? No, I'm sure it wasn't, I'm sure it was a guy-girl thing, because he didn't give me the Pity Look.
Go me!
“It's not quite the same thing, Emily. Drenching is what we call dosing a sheep.”
“Oh,” I said, überly cool, just walking along with his arm around my shoulders. Arm on shoulders, that's got to be worth fifteen points, don't you think? Yeah, so do I. “It sounds...uh...wet.”
“It's not particularly, unless you don't know how to use a drenching gun.”
Well, poop, how was I supposed to know I had to take a class in basic sheep firearms before coming to Scotland?
As it turns out, the drenching gun isn't really a gun at all, it's a yellow thing with a long shiny nozzle thing, and a hose thing, and stuff squirts out of it when you pull back on the trigger. Alec gave me a drenching gun, and showed me how to use it. It looked pretty simple—the dose of the gucky drenching stuff was set automatically, so all I had to do was stick the long shiny part in the sheep's mouth, squirt, and move on to the next sheep.
That sounds simple, but the sad truth is that sheep are not only stupid and mean, they also don't like having long shiny nozzle things stuck in their mouth. And let me just say, if anyone ever told me the day would come that I'd be standing out in a muddy pasture with a gazillion dirty, stinking, mean, selfish sheep who don't want to take their medicine, I'd have told them to get themselves a new brain because this girl doesn't do that sort of thing, but there I was.
The sheep were squeezed through a long narrow fence area called—for some reason, don't try to figure it out, this is Scotland—a race. It makes the sheep go in single file, so you can drench them and stuff. Anyhoo, Holly was given driving duty, so she had to get the sheep through the race. Alec, Ruaraidh and I hung out along the sides, and when a sheep stopped in front of us, we were supposed to insert shiny thing, squeeze, and remove for the next sheep.
“Alec!” I yelled when my first sheep refused to open its mouth. “What do you say to make them open their mouth?”
“You don't say anythin’,” he answered.
I put my hands on my hips and gave him the Eyebrow of Fwah. “Well, then how do you get the drenchy stuff in?”
He sighed and came over to where I was standing with my (obstinate and very stinky) sheep. “Look, you just slide it into her mouth like this, then pull the trigger. It's very easy.”
I waved my nozzle at him. “I tried that, but the stupid thing just clamped its teeth together so I couldn't—oh! Sorry about that, Alec.”
Alec wiped the drenching stuff off his face, gave me a look that didn't seem too happy, and went to the hose. Evidently the drenchy stuff is bad for people.
Oops!
He came back and stood next to me while I tried to drench the sheep, but she kept moving her head and bucking and stuff, and the next thing I knew, I'd drenched the fence, one of the dogs, my shoe, the sheep's butt, and Alec's left knee.
“It's not my fault!” I said when he took my drenching gun away from me, claiming I was a maniac with it. “It has a hair-trigger! You just look at the thing and it squirts!”
Ruaraidh came back from where he was washing the drenchy off Kaylee. He wasn't smiling. In fact, he looked a bit cheesed at me. I don't know why, it was an accident! And it's not like I got him in the eye like I did Alec.
I was demoted to sheep handler, and went to help Holly shove sheep into the race.