The Barn

The Ca’Mazzetto Barn is an E-ticket Fun House. It’s my favorite ride on the farm; it’s where all the 4-legged action takes place: feeding, milking, mating, birthing, nurturing and even dying.

This house is the home for the several hundred sheep and lamb. There are various rooms and passageways, gates and fences, stairs and platforms, bathtubs and hay dispensers, pens and nurseries, corridors and feeding stalls. On the floor sits hay, feces, mud and urine. On the metal beam ceiling hangs string, like stalactites in a cave.

The sheep move through this maze without so much as a floor map, occasionally spurred on by a dog or Pasqual yelling “Ale! Ale!”

My first task: figuring how to enter the barn. There is an array of openings but all seem to be blocked via a sheet of metal, barricaded door, or wood piling. Wisely, I deduce that if the sheep can use the dogs for guidance, so can I. Bubul the smallest dog leads the way. My canine friend jumps on a wooden frame, over a wire fence, on to an inverted palette, through a wall opening and into Room Function x_(y^2 ) (Maybe in a few weeks I’ll have construed what the room functions are but at this point, it remains a variable in an unsolved equation.)

There is a brief moment of silence upon entering the premises; hundreds of beady eyes look up at me. The moment is over and the background music comes to the foreground in forte! Every pitch of “bah” is heard. A number of sheep “jingle” from the bell around their neck. Bubul barks. Few sick sheep cough. And the head-master gives orders to move. The concerto sounds like this:

Bah Bah BAh BAh bbbaaa bbbaaa Jingle Jingle BAAH bark bark bah “Ale! Ale!” bah bah bah cough cough BaH BaH “Ale! Ale! Bastardo.. ALE!” Baaaaaaaaaaah.

It’s pure magic and worth the price of admission.