Why so much lamb for Nevie?

In her own words…

As you can see by my menu selections I eat a lot of lamb. I should probably explain why.

During undergraduate school at Clemson we had to choose between the usual speech class or showing an animal. I didn’t care much for talking about stupid assigned topics, so I chose to show a lamb. This was the first year Clemson had sheep and I thought how bad could it be? After all, it’s only a lamb.

Well, we were assigned our lambs and of course I get the most stubborn one in the herd. I spent hours every day training her (when you show sheep, there is nothing connecting you to them [i.e. no leashes or leads], you just put hand on their chin). Our instructors told us that the judge would not ask us any questions or touch our lambs. We just had to walk them around and set them up.

Anyway, the day of the show comes. My lamb is shorn, bathed, and looking quite sad (she wasn’t a very good looking lamb without her fleece) but I did the best I could with what I had. We set up and the judge comes up to me and right away asks me a question that I had no idea what the answer was! Then to top it all off he grabs her flanks (right near the hips) and she takes off! So I am getting dragged around the arena by my lamb (fun! not!), but I don’t let go. You could imagine my embarrassment in front of all my classmates getting dragged around by my poor stupid lamb that I put so much time into training. So I get her back under control and calm her down and rejoin the show. Surely there is no way he would touch her again right? Wrong (I think he hated me or just wanted to watch me get trampled again), he grabbed her again and off around the arena I went. Then to add insult to injury, after it was all said and done, the judge said he was happy I didn’t let go of my lamb and stuck it out to the end.

From that day on, I eat as much lamb as I can. Spiteful I know, but very very tasty!

Now you know why there’s so much lamb in my trip reports and reviews!