The farmer put the tup in with the Welsh ewes on Sunday, and by Monday morning Eduardo had taken against him to the point that the ram would not come out from behind the water trough. An alpaca guards. That is the entire reason he is in that field, and he has done it with total commitment for four years, and the one thing nobody mentioned when the farmer bought him is that a guard alpaca has no idea what a ram is for. A ram, to Eduardo, is a large, hard-headed stranger who has arrived in his field uninvited and is now harassing his ewes one at a time with obvious intent. The only part he has wrong is the conclusion, which is that the ewes are supposed to be harassed, in October, by this specific stranger, because the lambs in April depend on it, and the farmer has paid two hundred pounds for the stranger and would like him left to work. Eduardo had him pinned by seven on Monday without laying a hair on him. He stood at his forty-five degrees between the ram and the flock and did the long slow walk at him every time the ram moved toward a ewe, ears flat, head up like a periscope, and the ram found himself backed against the trough with sixty kilos of fleece staring at him from six feet and a flock of ewes he could not reach looking at him like a man who has turned up to a wedding on the wrong day. The orphan lamb stood at Eduardo's shoulder, facing the same way, being no help whatsoever. The farmer watched from the gate for twenty minutes and then did the thing you do, which is take the guard out. Eduardo and the lamb went up to the top paddock and the ram came out from behind the trough and got on with it, and by Monday night the first ewe had a red mark on her rump and the season was underway. Eduardo has stood at the top gate for three days looking down at a field full of his ewes being interfered with, and humming. The farmer has described it as "aggrieved". The lamb, who thinks it is an alpaca, has stood beside him the whole time looking down at twenty sheep it does not recognise as relatives, being, for once in its life, exactly as useful as the animal it copies. They go back in when the tup comes out. Eduardo will walk the whole flock one ewe at a time, find them all marked, and hum the one the glossary lists as "all present and correct", because they will be, and he will have no idea what any of it meant.