Loving him was the easy part

Those five poignant words formed our update to the kind soul who came upon The Professor. Refusing to look the other way—unlike the human charged with his care and the inadequate animal protection laws that failed him—they stopped to investigate the white bundle of “something” roadside.

For how long The Professor wandered aimlessly before collapsing there, we’ll never know. But we are deeply grateful that the wildlife carer stopped to check on that white bundle and discovered not “something”, but “someone”. That someone was a critically emaciated lamb, his rear end encrusted with faeces, his life hanging by a thread. With the carer rushing him to sanctuary with the biggest teddy bear we’ve ever seen, we soon met The Professor: a sweet fragile lamb who weighed a mere 20 kg. Even with his small frame and tender age, he should have weighed far more; several of our lambs of equivalent age weighed much more than him.

The gentle look in his eyes spoke of his innocence and it nearly broke our hearts. “How could anyone allow an animal to become so neglected?” we thought as rage bubbled beneath our sadness. But setting those feelings aside, we focused on positivity—the hope we trusted would infuse him with strength. Through an intravenous line carefully guided into his feeble body, fluids were pumped to rehydrate him. A faecal sample soon revealed the hidden suffering he had long endured: a devastating parasite burden caused by the bloody-sucking barber’s pole worm—off the charts in its severity.

As The Professor nestled in the loving embrace of his teddy, we worked tirelessly to prepare a life-saving blood transfusion—his only hope against debilitating anaemia.

We enlisted the help of Lambini, our frequent flyer blood donor sheep—rescued, in an ironic twist, by the same wildlife carer years ago. Soon 400 mL of blood was drawn to swirl hope and health into The Professor’s compromised body.

And we waited.

Through the long wakeful night, we waited, clinging to small signs of hope. Slowly they came. His foul-smelling diarrhea transformed from a dark, murky slop into something far more normal. He drank water on his own and seemed to enjoy his smoothly blended feed.

But at 7.01 am on the morning of 27 January, The Professor’s prematurely worn-out body said no more. He slipped peacefully from this world, a soft smile gracing his face as his sweet head gently rested on his oversized teddy’s lumpy leg.

From a dear little being, who deserved none of the hardships life had dealt him, we take this invaluable lesson: True wisdom begins with reminding ourselves that what we cannot control calls for acceptance; what we can control calls for action. In striving to right the wrongs before us, we summon the best within us. And even in failure, we fall forward—rising stronger, wiser and kinder than before.

Dear Professor, we take some comfort in knowing you are in a place where human cruelty and indifference can never touch or maim you again. We trust you felt our kind embrace and knew how special you were.

Your life truly mattered to us—and for us, that was the easy part.

Godspeed, little one. Godspeed.