Mona was very good at keeping things in perspective, except when it came to animals. She would become visibly upset if an animal was being mistreated. Although not a card carrying member of PETA, she was always on the look out for that stray cat or puppy, taking it in until she could find it a suitable home.
One day last winter Mona called me from the salon in the plaza in town. The last store on a chain of 12 connecting storefronts with big picture windows, she was able to view the parking lot from her chair. At the other end of the succession of business was a pizza parlor.
The snow was blowing and the parking lot soon became a sheet of ice. Many of the businesses were beginning to close early, letting the employees leave to beat the traffic.
She was very upset, crying and sputtering, barely able to get the words out of her mouth.
Shortly before the storm, a man drove up in a truck, the kind that has slats on either side to see inside the vehicle. He was delivering sheep to the slaughterhouse after picking them up from a neighboring farm.
He was getting hungry and thought he would stop to get a slice of pizza to hold him over while he waited for the snowflakes to subside. The salt trucks were out and he would be able to drive safely once they had been spread. He wasn’t that concerned about the cargo; after all, it was only a couple of sheep, most likely going to the slaughterhouse. Besides, his belly was growling and he was tired. No one would mind if he stopped to grab a slice, certainly not the sheep.
But Mona minded. She couldn’t believe that the man would leave poor defenseless lambs in the middle of a growing snow storm. She watched the animals with one eye, while cutting the hair of the teenage girl who was unaware of the drama about to unfold.
She watched the snow and the ice as it pelted the sheep in the face, and heard their screams of “baaaaaa….. baaaa…..” in their sweet lamb-y voices grow louder and louder. She imagined them yelling “Monaaaaa…..heeelp us……baaaa….help us…..” The crying and wailing went on for almost an hour, the face of the sheep barely visible now under mounds of snow.
Mona couldn’t take it.
Putting down the scissors, she ran to the phone and called the phone number taped to the side of the register, the pizza parlor where they had taken out hot gooey slices of pie many times before.
“Mario’s” answered the tired voice of the owner, another woman who had been working for years longer than she had intended. Her name was Rita and she had been quite the looker in her day. She hadn’t seen the light of day, however, for a very long time.
“This is Mona” my friend said, ready to read Rita the riot act.
“Do you have a guy in there who drove the truck full of the sheep?”
“Yes” she answered, somewhat relieved she didn’t have to take another order, and she called to him to come to the phone.
“Ayah” he answered, his mouth full of pizza crust. “Whose dis?”
“Never mind who this is” answered Mona sternly. “When are you going to come out and take care of those sheep!”
“What?” He quickly surmised the lady was crazy, because who would care about sheep?
“They are getting pelted with snow and ice and they are just crying and crying, what are you going to do about it?” She was getting light headed from screaming and her breathing was short and stifled.
“Lady” he answered as calmly as he could. “They are livestock. They are going to be killed. I don’t think they care about the snow.” The phone went dead.
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That’s when Mona called me.
“Those poor defenseless sheep!” she cried. “How could he do that?”
I had to admit I thought she was a tad over reacting, so I asked her, ever so gently.
“Mona. Are you sure this is really about the sheep?”
“Yes! Yes!” she answered, moaning now and almost out of breath. “Its about the sheep!”
It wasn’t.
To be continued……
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