From the time I can remember we always had animals, I grew up in the middle of nowhere and it was the norm, to be able to run around without a care in the world play with the animals and have fun with my big sister and our friends.
One day around May which coincidentally is my birthday month, my dad came home with a sheep, not a big sheep but still a sheep, Being a child of only 7, I thought the sheep was my birthday present, So I named it, with help from my older sister, he would be called lamb chop!
So the months went on and every day after school, I would run in and play with lamb chop, then as Christmas rolled round the goose went missing, and then after going shopping with my granddad, pork chop was gone! I asked my dad ( later in life I leaned to become accustomed to his wicked sense of humor) Where lamb chop was, He pointed to the big chest freezer we had and said he is in there with the peas and the goose, I knew what he meant, and went screaming to my mum, the whole family found it funny, but no me.
So Christmas day came and my sister and I had everything on our Christmas list’s, we must have been good girls this year people were saying, Then came Christmas dinner, I knew what was going to happen, lamb chop was going to get eaten, by me!
I cried so much over my Christmas dinner, my dad must have felt very guilty as the next morning, he had managed to get the farmer to give me one of his sheep, I have no idea how he did his, but I remember smiling and hugging my dad’s legs, and then asking him not to kill this one, and if he wouldn’t mind not killing the dogs or cats for next years dinner.
The next year my dad never even introduced me to the turkey, he asked the farmer to keep it and then kill it, That year the turkey was delicious, all because I hadn’t named it or even meet it to get attached to it.
From then on I was never allowed to meet the new animals or my dad knew they would become pets and not stock.
Every year, my family mentions lamb chop, as I got older I could and still can laugh about it, but I never put lamb on my dinner table.