Sheep

Sheep are among the few remaining resources on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley, but they are also vulnerable prey. Their place in the narrator’s childhood is defined by the flock’s exposure to aerial attacks and by the family’s shared, violent response to them.

The Flock and Its Setting

The family lives on what remains of its sheep farm: fifty acres, mostly steppe in the San Joaquin Valley. Sheep share this precarious rural setting with chickens and other domestic animals, and the diminishing farm is both a source of subsistence and a landscape under constant threat from predators.

Predation and Loss

Birds of prey are described as especially dangerous because they attack in numbers and with great speed. Red-Tailed Hawks, Goshawks, and Golden Eagles circle above the pasture before plunging down to seize smaller animals and carry them off alive. Larger animals are attacked and mutilated where they graze or sleep. The narrator remembers the dying bleats of lambs and the carcasses left scattered across the fields, making the cost of keeping sheep brutally visible.

The Family’s Response

When the birds attack, the narrator’s father orders the family to shoot, and they fire together. The sheep’s vulnerability thus becomes part of a repeated household ritual: the flock is prey, the family its armed defender, and the response is immediate rather than reflective. The account presents the animals chiefly through this precarious relation to the farm and its predators, while the remembered losses give that relationship its emotional force.