Pandora's Box

The day finally arrived... for clipping sheep hooves! I worked on a sheep farm for a summer, back when I was in college. Who would've thought that ten years later, those hoof clipping skills would come in handy... while living in San Francisco, at that! MC works at a school that owns two sheep. She'd been anxiously dreading the day she'd have to clip their hooves for the first time, despite knowing that I knew a thing or two about the procedure. Though I only worked on a sheep farm for one summer, there were 150 sheep there and I (with help) clipped all of their hooves. That's 600 hooves. And I didn't make a single one of them bleed. Jojo and Lucky, being 151st and 152nd sheep whose hooves I've now clipped - didn't bleed either. I thought for sure they would hate me, however. After all, they'd only met me once before and here I was coming barging in, tossing them onto their sides so I could access their feetsies and then taking my time with MC's dull, antique bush pruning pliers on their overgrown hoof nails. As I rolled them back onto their feet, I half-expected to get butted in the head with their freshly manicured toes. But instead, Lucky just stepped over to the feed bin and went back to eating. Jojo, despite being the more pleasant-mannered of the two under normal circumstances, did take off like a bullet out of the barn as soon as the door was opened. But even Jojo was easily enticed to approach me with a hand full of alfalfa.

While I may know something about sheep, I know nothing about chickens. But chickens are MC's passion. She grew up on a farm with a flock of chickens that followed her like baby ducks everywhere she went. She taught me how to pick up the chickens on this farm. I got to hold PomPom for quite awhile as she pecked at bits of corn from the palm of my hand. Her feathers were so smooth and soft!

Both C and MC desperately want a farm again. But the beauty of this "farm" was that... right after clipping sheep hooves and cuddling chickens, we walked out and picked up a burrito in the Mission. And despite how cute and cuddly PomPom was, I still ordered chicken in my taco.