The Adventures of Dove Step the Sheep, Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Dove Step woke up with a start. It was very dark in the shadows.  The moon was full and bright. It was so pretty. Dove Step thought, “I’d like to go there someday and meet the sheep on the moon. It looks like such a bright happy place.” Suddenly the wind came up and it looked like the shadows were dancing. With the wind whistling in the trees, the shadows had music to dance to.

In the morning he started talking to the other lambs about his great idea. After eating, they gathered and made ideas to go to the moon. 

Let’s make a catapult!” said one lamb.

“Let’s make wings!” said another

“Let’s climb on each other!”

“Let’s jump as high as we can!”

“Let’s make a ladder!”

“Let’s sing our way there!”

“Let’s start tomorrow!” said Dove Step. They all started playing with a new and unified excitement. At end of day they went to bed so excited it was a tad bit hard to sleep.

After feeding time the lambs gathered and decided to try each idea. One at a time. The fastest idea to try was to climb one atop the other. As there were fifteen lambs, this seemed to be a good idea. Since it was Dove Step’s idea to go to the moon he was going to be the last one to climb on top of the others. 

Lamb one was easy to get in place. Lamb two had a bit of a hard time but using a rock to climb high enough, he was able to climb atop lamb one. Lamb three climbed up a tree. This worked for number four and five also.

However, when number six tried, she landed wrong and they all came tumbling down. To the ground. She felt so sheepish!

Now for plan two. The Ladder! They snuck the farmer’s ladder out to the field and propped it up on the tree. Four lambs held the ladder steady for safety reasons. The other eleven lambs started to ascend the ladder. When Dove Step (the first one to go up the ladder) was half way up he got nervous and started bleating for his mom. Soon the other ten sheep started making noise because they wanted to go to the moon.

All of a sudden Dove fell off the ladder! The four sheep let go of the ladder! Luckily, they fell in a huge tree unharmed.

                                          Illustrated by D 

Now they had a higher boost for the next plan. They chose not to do the catapult. They made wings in no time! Leaves and branches were used, with the farmer’s old umbrellas. Dove jumped off the highest branch and glided down gracefully. He was followed by eleven other sheep. The horse in the bordering pasture, who had been eating some of the slightly over-ripe spoiled apples thought he was seeing lambs flying. But he knew that lambs don’t have wings. He shook his head about as hard as he does when a fly flies up his nose and snorted out loud. Then went to find some hay to chew on. He’d had enough of the sweet apples for the day.

Dove tried flapping the wings like birds do but, it made him fall faster. Finally, he touched the ground. And his mom, alerted because of the snort from the sodden horse, came rushing to him. “What were you thinking!?” She said sweetly, controlling her anger with all the love she felt for him.

As Dove Step unfolded his dreams to go to the moon, mama sheep listened attentively to the plans the lambs had developed. She listened patiently while Dove shared their various attempts. Then his mama realized that Dove simply needed more knowledge about the moon.

She started with how stars (gaseous planets) and planets are formed. We can’t live on the sun. It’s too hot. There’s no oxygen. There’s no water. There’s no shade. There are no farmers to shear our wool off.

Then she described how the moon, though a solid planet, also had no farmers, no air, no water and was too hot when it faced the sun and too cold on the far side which did not face the sun.

Once Dove Step understood that the moon was not a place for him to live, he decided that the moon was not a place for him to live, he decided that maybe living here in the meadow on Mother Earth was the better choice. And maybe, just maybe the moon is really more for looking at and admiring!