An Odd Trio
Writing from Fordingbridge a reader remarks: 'Some friends of ours who live at Haverfordwest had a motherless lamb which had to be brought up by hand. A cock was given to them for the table but they didn't kill it and it became friends with the lamb. A gander which was repudiated by the geese joined the cock and the lamb and they all three went about together as great friends. This happened some months ago and the friendship is as firm as ever. The lamb had a covered box to sleep in when it was wet, and now, being too big to get into it, it lies with its head only in the box and the cock takes refuge in the box, too, in wet weather. They go about the field in single file, avoiding all the other creatures in the field. I wonder if you have ever heard of such a close friendship between three such different creatures, especrally when there were many others in the Same field ? ' I must confess I have never heat(' ot stall an unusual trio. In fact, so far as I can recall at the moment, my experience of friendship among animals is confined to pairs —horses and chickens, cows and chickens, cats and dogs and so on. These are quite uncanny relationships and it always seems to me that there is something sad and pathetie about them. Outcasts arc sorry creatures, and exactly why they are shunned by their own kind is almost always a mystery.
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