31/08/2026
The Becoming of Pop Ular 🐑 💖
The mud washed away easily enough, we were told. But looking at the little lamb before us now, we cannot help but think, if only neglect did too.
Two days ago, a kind-hearted tradesman spotted a tiny lamb lying in a ditch, her little body covered in mud and her future looking every bit as bleak. Once cleaned, however, the little someone beneath told a story all her own.
She is a shadow of the lamb she should be. So painfully thin that her bones do their best to point out where her body ought to be, leaving her tiny frame resembling a living coat hanger draped in fuzzy wool.
For far too long, this little girl has struggled without her mumma and without the nutrition a growing lamb so desperately needs.
And now time is asking us to hurry.
Somewhere amid all she has endured, she has lost her sucking reflex. So while other lambs eagerly wrap their mouths around a teat, this little girl cannot. And so we are tube-feeding her around the clock, delivering the nutrition and precious protein her depleted body needs while trying to feed her something else in equal measure.
Kindness.
Because although kindness cannot undo yesterday, we have seen enough to know what it can sometimes do with tomorrow. And already, beneath that fragile exterior, there are glimpses of someone determined to meet it.
On spindly legs she totters behind the older, sturdier lambs, doing her level best to keep up. She follows them here, follows them there and seems determined that wherever lambs are going, she should be going too.
It is as though nobody has told her just how poorly she is. And we certainly aren't going to. Her future remains touch and go, for her little body has much ground to make up and, right now, time and protein are precious commodities.
But she is no longer making up that ground alone.
Which brings us to her name.
Our lamb naming theme this year is pop. Pop Tart, Pop Sicle, Mary Poppins, K Pop, Lolly Pop and more—you get the idea. And somehow, for this tiny girl once lying unnoticed in a muddy ditch, only one name seemed absolutely perfect.
Pop Ular, Ular for short.
Perhaps there is a lesson tucked inside her name. For being seen by the whole world matters very little when the one who desperately needs to see you doesn't.
Pop Ular needed someone to notice.
Only just one.
And someone did.
And sometimes that is all kindness needs to begin changing everything.
Come on, little Ular.
Yesterday may have left its mark on you. Now let kindness leave hers.
"If we could live happy and healthy lives without harming others, why wouldn't we?"
