He was bobbing up and down, up and down, cutting "v" ripples in the muddy water when she crawled through the foxtails and thistle and peered over the edge. But no sooner did her eyes light on him than he splashed under, hairless tail slapping the water behind him. "Huh," she muttered, wondering how he could have heard her even on elbows and knees. She hopped up, swiping at her muddied jeans but ignoring the elbows of her untucked blouse. Maybe she'd catch him further down the ditch.
She climbed over one fence into a baby orchard with empty trees, all except one with a yellow apple hanging unsupportably from a twig. She cut through them and over the second fence, startling an old ewe from her rest. "Shoo, momma," she called, and the ewe lumbered off, the wool at her knees swaying. "Maa," the ewe complained, and the girl echoed, "Maa," before she skipped up to the tractor road.
A plop in the ditch ten feet below called out the return of the muskrat. She dropped just as a Chevy chucka-boomed past and a man's head popped out the window to stare at her, but she stared at the water. The muskrat disappeared once more beneath the surface.
Further along she detoured on a dirt trail that sloped to the ditch water below. She paused before her head descended past the rim and looked back at the fa2mhouse, where three windows faced her from the yellow siding. Her mom could be looking from any. "Get out of that ditch," she could already hear the words echoing off the fields, startling lambs to their feet while old mommas, too arthritic to move, just maaed through their cuds. But the sheep remained placid. The girl ducked on down the path, returning her gaze to the water. The path narrowed in a cattail patch. Her sneakers sank into the spongy mud, tripping her into the cattails on either side, and as they crackled under her weight something small rushed away through the middle and splashed into the water. "Drat." She tugged her shoes free and continued through.
On the other side of the cattails, she drew up. Instead of the muskrat she saw a mound of wool and stick legs driving against the air, blocking the ditch where it narrowed- a ewe, stuck in the mud. The girl splashed around to her head and the ewe struggled with renewed force.
"Easy, momma," the girl shushed and pushed at the rotund body. The ewe flailed, but her back was wedged in the ditch and no amount of struggle freed her. "Maa," she called plaintively, eyeing the girl upside down.
Seizing hold of the ewe's clumpy wool, the girl braced her feet in the mud and heaved. "Get up, momma," she commanded. "Up, momma, up."
The ewe's great frame didn't rise. She kicked and maaed unhappily, striking the girl's thigh with a hoof. With a grimace the girl rubbed at the bruise with lanolin-covered fingers before clambering out of the ditch to get help.
"Sarah Anne!" Her mom's voice cut across the field just as her head popped above 'the rim. "Get yourself out of that ditch this instant!"
The girl waved at the ewe hidden beneath her. "There's a ewe stuck, Mom!" she yelled.
Her mom called back indistinctly and climbed the fence, shoving her arms through the sleeves of her flannel jacket. The ewes by her clambered to their feet at the noise and lumbered toward the back gate, heading for a field with fewer disturbances.
"Where is she?" Her-mom asked. Sarah Anne pointed and followed her mom back into the ditch, where the ewe continued to lament. "Grab her by the wool. Watch her legs," her mom ordered. "Easy, momma, we'll take care of you."
Together they heaved. The ewe flew to her feet and tried to rush away, but Sarah Anne's mom tackled her, locking her arms around the ewe's neck. Upright, the ewe looked pot-bellied, like she was pregnant in the wrong season.
Her mom looked up, face flushed. "Get vegetable oil from the cupboard in the barn," she instructed.
Sarah Anne darted out of the ditch and across the rutted field, catching up to the last of the straggling ewes beside the cement barn. She pushed in the unlatched side door and squeezed past boxes of cobwebs, tools, fencing supplies, not worrying about tracking her mud-caked shoes across the faded yellow linoleum.
In the cupboard above her dad's abandoned tackbox she tugged out a plastic bottle shaped like a woman. The liquid inside gleamed like a first place trophy. Squeezing the narrow middle between her fingers, she: tan out without latching the door.
"What's it for?" she asked when her mom took it and twisted off the cap with two fingers.
"To keep her from bloating. See how fat she is?" her mom answered. "Hold her head."
When Sarah Anne wrapped her arms around the ewe's neck, the ewe turned toward her, huffing the scent of half-digested greens into her face. Sarah Anne wrinkled her nose and turned her face away, but kept her skinny arms around while her mom shoved the end of the bottle into the side of the ewe's mouth and tilted it. Vegetable oil dribbled down the ewe's cheeks and neck as she struggled to escape the administration, but Sarah Anne and her mother hung on.
Half the bottle covered the ewe's neck before she swallowed enough and Sarah Anne could let go of her. Head by the ground, the ewe stood still for an instant, chomping her teeth left to right and wheezing through her nose. Then, realizing that they no longer kept her there, she charged up the hill and onto the tractor path. Sarah Anne and her mom followed the ewe up, the bottle of vegetable oil still uncapped in her mom's hand.
The ewe trundled across the field without looking back. "Maa," she called after the sisters who had left through the back gate earlier. She shook her head once, flapping both ears across her polled forehead.
"Thanks, honey," Sarah Anne's mom said. Then she anchored her hands on her hips. "But I don't want you down in that ditch without me next time. Where's your coat?"
Sarah Anne glanced at her muddied blouse. "I left it over there," she said, and pointed to where she'd first seen the muskrat.
"Get it and come in for dinner, then," her mom said, and started diagonally across the field to the house. "And don't go looking for that muskrat again! I want you in before it gets dark!"
Sarah Anne bolted off down the tractor path, calling out a reassurance to her mom, but she couldn't help but look at the ditch below. The muskrat wasn't there, either further down the ditch now that they had cleared the ewe from his path, or hidden in his own burrow somewhere.
After climbing the fence and passing once more through the orchard, Sarah Anne saw her denim jacket lying in the weeds not far from the ditch. She slung it over her shoulders. l'.
Halfway through a step back to the house, she paused and looked over her shoulder. In only a second she could peek into the ditch. Mom wouldn't even know it, and the muskrat could have returned.
She didn't get down on her belly this time. She crept with chest by knees, fingers curled over the sleeves of her jacket and hair swinging loosely over her shoulders. Through the thistles lining the edge, she saw the brown water below, unflurried, empty.
But somewhere further down the ditch, a tail slapped against the water. Sarah Anne swung toward it, stared at the water intently. The ripples from downstream broke up the first-smooth water beneath her, but nothing followed. It had to be the muskrat, Sarah Anne, knew, or else it was the toad that had disappeared a week ago after Sam threw a rock at it.
She looked back at the house. A light had come on in the front window. She swung the other direction. The sun's belly was just resting on the foothills. Mom had said to be in before the sun was down.
Cassandra Ferrin, 17, an Idaho Statesman reader in Emmett, Idaho. The Emmett High School senior plans to attend Willamette University in Oregon this fall. Sponsoring teacher: Joanne Davis. Story: "While in Pursuit of a Muskrat.