The lost-animal hotel. That’s what a lot of people around here, in northwest Colorado grazing country, call our 35-acre ranch. My husband, Charlie, and I keep 30 head of lambs and sheep and a mess of stray dogs and cats saved from the animal shelter. So the call I got one morning from the grocery where my mother worked was not unusual.
“Fern,” she said, “there’s a man here who found a lamb with a broken leg. He works on a logging crew and can’t care for it. I told him he could leave it with you. That okay?”
Half an hour later the logger pulled up to the ranch. He hopped out of the cab of his four-by-four and lowered the rear flap. In the truck bed was a frightened, furry baby. But it was no lamb. It was an elk. My mother had misunderstood.
“Saw it lying in the dirt this morning by the side of the road,” the man said. “It was still there at quitting time. The mother was nowhere around. A couple of coyotes were circling nearby. The calf tried to get up. That’s when I realized it had a broken leg.”
The logger had called the state Department of Wildlife. A game warden told him to leave the elk there and let nature take its course. But the logger couldn’t bring himself to do that, so he lifted it into his truck. Now he passed responsibility to me.
I wasn’t sure I wanted it. Taking an animal from the wild—even an injured one that would otherwise die—is against the law. But one look at the calf’s wide, frightened eyes made me reluctant to turn it away. Charlie made the decision for me. “We’ll try to mend her leg and then let her go back to where she belongs,” he said, sweeping the animal up in his arms. She still had her baby spots. “Oh, how precious,” I said. The name stuck.
Precious stayed in a fenced-in area just outside our lamb pen. We fed her lamb pellets and milk from a bottle. She grew quickly, until she was a foot taller than the lambs. Her leg healed. Now that Precious was healthy, I fully expected her to heed the call of the wild and run off. We have a fence around our property, but it’s only high enough to keep the sheep from straying. She could clear it easily.
Sure enough, the time came when Precious wandered off. That first night I was a jumble of emotions. I was happy for her, happy to let her go and join a wild herd of her own. That was what nature told her to do. But I worried about her and asked God to keep a lookout. There were hunters out there.
Next morning I had a surprise waiting for me outside. Precious had returned! I wasn’t sure why. Elk feed mostly off leaves and grain. It wasn’t like she had to kill to survive. “I thought I’d seen the last of you,” I told her. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”
Her comings and goings got to be a habit. Off at night, back at the ranch come morning, sleeping near the lambs. During the day she played with them. She became their protector. “She grew up with lambs,” I told Charlie. “I believe she thinks she is one.”
Sometimes a herd of elk would run through our property. Precious wanted nothing to do with them. Now and then I saw her grazing with deer. But she scared them. Precious didn’t seem to know her place in the world. I struggled with this. The good Lord did not create wild animals to be pets. Had I messed things up for one of his most imposing creatures?
But then I’d watch Precious loping around our property, and I’d think, Lord, if we hadn’t taken her in, she would have died that day in the road.
I did my best not to grow attached to Precious, but inevitably I did. One day a game warden came out to our ranch after some of our sheep had been killed by coyotes. He saw Precious. I asked if his department had ever relocated an elk. “Never had a reason to,” he said. He looked at me. “Do you want us to relocate this one?” “No,” I said, and we dropped the subject. He saw that she was free to roam as she pleased.
Two years, three years, four years passed. I started treating Precious like one of the family. I fed her hay, alfalfa and lamb meal, along with the rest of our herd. Sometimes I gave her treats, like apples or cantaloupe. About two years ago she developed a taste for cat food. Whenever she heard me opening cans to feed the strays, she loped up to the house.
Looking after Precious hasn’t been all fun and games. I grow terrified every hunting season. We do nothing to restrict her, and I worry whenever she jumps the fence. Sometimes she’s gone a day, sometimes more. Occasionally I get a call from a neighboring rancher who says she’s eating his alfalfa or the flowers around his home.
Once a rancher marched his herd of sheep down our road during shearing time. Precious jumped the fence and, thinking the sheep were ours, tried to herd them onto our property. “It’s okay, Precious,” I yelled, running after her. “Your sheep are safe at the ranch.”
Sometimes I forget myself with this imposing animal. One night Charlie and I were feeding the sheep and Charlie tossed Precious some hay. “You gave her too much,” I said, and reached to the ground to take some of it back. Precious brought her leg down on my arm. She didn’t hurt me, but I got the message. Precious is not a pet.
Nevertheless, she has been with us eight years now. When she runs off and doesn’t return the next morning, a part of me prays that she’s joined an elk herd and returned to the wild.
But Precious always returns. And when she does, my prayer’s one of thanksgiving, that she’s safe in her home with the stray cats and dogs at the lost-animal hotel.
Download your free ebook, Angel Sightings: 7 Inspirational Stories About Heavenly Angels and Everyday Angels on Earth.
