Sheepish

I bet you didn't know that I used to work with sheep... Yep that's right, big smelly sheep.

I had just returned with honor from serving the Lord in Porto Alegre South, Brazil so, when I was told that they were going to pay me $6.50 an hour, I chose to chalk it up to "experience" rather than "they were screwing me over."

The job sounded like a perfect fit. I was going into Pre-Med/Biomedical Engineering and they were working with artificial hearts. Perfect! Little did I know that "working with artificial hearts" meant "being a twisted shepherd of sorts..." I was called in for an interview and after the interview they took me on a tour of the facility. This is where things got a little Pet Cemetary-ish...

We all got in an elevator and she hit the basement floor button. The doors opened and the smell of animal wafted into the elevator. I knew I was in for a treat. We walked through the dimly lit basement and she showed me all the animals being tested. I won't go into detail, but for the most part they all looked happy and most were roaming free, which is not how TV usually depicts labs such as these. Maybe I was caught off guard or maybe I just really needed a job, but when she offered me the job immediately after the tour, I accepted.

Training began and they taught me how to care for the sheep and the one freaking pig that made my life a living hell for 6 months. They taught me how to shimmy through the bars of the few sheep that were in cages to give them shots. I was timid at first, but the brute nurse told me to "man up" and push the sheep into one side of the cage while stabbing it in the back of the thigh with a hypodermic needle. She failed to mention that the sheep know this is coming... their eyes widened and they began to panic as any animal or human would do and then came the kicking and biting... I still remember the nurse yelling, "Just push him to the side of the cage!" as my 150 lb. body was being mutilated... The damn sheep won that day, but later I almost killed him so, I guess I got my revenge.

I would work alone in an abandoned hospital from 11 PM to 7 AM and then I had class at the U of U from 9 AM to Noon. Needless to say, I was a walking zombie for 6 months of my life. On my first real shift, they handed me a panic button to wear around my neck and said if anyone tried to break in and free the animals to use it and the police would arrive. So, not only did I have to worry about being killed in the old, creepy, abandoned hospital by the sheep and the angry pig, I also had to worry about being killed by Peta people...

I got in the swing of things fast. There were about 8 sheep but only two were being tested and I started calling them by name, Cain and Abel. Cain had a black face and he is the one that I almost killed, coincidence, I think not. I got used to my duties, which included and weren't limited to:

• Feeding the sheep hay
• Cleaning up sheep poop
• Shoving pills down the sheeps throat (It was for their own good..)
• Crawling in the sheep cage to give the sheep shots in the back of the thigh
• Taking the sheeps blood and testing it
• Watching to make sure that the tube (shunt) in the sheeps neck didn't clot
• Changing IV bags
• Checking on the stupid pig and feed it...
• And most of all, making sure the damn sheep didn't chew through their IV's.

All was going well, I could finish all my duties and have time to read Harry Potter out loud to the sheep... yes, maybe I got a little attached to Cain and Abel, but this was more of an effort to stay awake than anything else, believe me. One morning around 3 AM, Cains' shunt got a blood clot in it. I had to call up the nurse to come and take care of it. It was touch and go for awhile and they had to take his shunt out right then and there. Blood was everywhere, but for some reason it didn't bother me. If I saw the same thing today, I probably would pass out. I've gotten weak in my old age. That same sheep that had tried to kill me the first couple of days on the job was now about to die. I panicked and eventually left that job a month or two later.

I came to find out that Cain was the only sheep that made it out of that creepy facility alive. They patched him up and sent him to pasture. You're welcome, Cain.

Soon after leaving the "Sheep Hospital," I got out of the pre-med track at the U because if I could become so attached to a sheep, how could I ever cope with a death of a human on my hands? Sure, this is a little dramatic, but now I prefer to be on the other side of the medical device industry... in a lab, full of windows, with no animals.

Maybe it was fate or maybe it had something to do with my last name that drew me to these stupid creatures, but they changed the course of my education and I guess I really can chalk it up to experience, the craziest and weirdest experience, thus far in my life!