Bob Monger saw Alexis Yoder walking the two creatures around his suburban neighborhood in New Holland.
Alexis Yoder takes Billy and Lily on a walk through her New Holland neighborhood.
Billy (in blue halter) is shyer than the outgoing Lily (in pink halter).
Sheepwalking in New Holland
"I thought, 'What kind of puppies are they?' " he recalls.
Neighbor Jo Habalar wondered the same thing when she first saw them.
"I'm thinking, 'I didn't realize she had two dogs.' Yet they looked kind of strange," she says. "I looked and looked again. I just wasn't sure. I wondered why would those dogs be so white. And my husband said, 'I believe they're sheep.' I said, 'That can't be!' "
Monger says, "I thought, 'Holy mackerel!' "
Meet Billy and Lily, the stars of West Cedar Street.
Yoder, 16, an 11th-grader at Garden Spot High School, is raising the two market lambs and plans to show them at the Ephrata Fair later this month and at the New Holland Fair in early October.
Sheepwalking in New Holland
She regularly walks the woolly creatures around her neighborhood, to socialize them and to build up their muscles.
They draw a crowd as they amble past ranch homes, driveways and telephone poles.
"It's like the ice cream truck," Habalar says. "The kids just pour out of their homes to pet Billy and Lily."
Adults, too. Monger likes to pat their heads and rub their sides. He also talks to the pair.
"I say, 'I hate to see where you're going,' " he says.
Well yes, there is that.
Yoder will sell the lambs after the fairs and then they're heading to (stop reading if you have a soft heart for something cute and curly-haired) someone's dinner table.
Yoder shrugs. It's part of the cycle of farm life and she's been through it before.
This actually is her second year of raising lambs.
Though she is not a farm girl and never owned an animal other than a Shih Tzu named Bailey, Yoder always has liked agriculture. When her family lived near Gordonville, she used to help a neighboring farmer with horses, chickens and goats.
When she got to Garden Spot High School, Yoder became interested in raising animals through the Grassland Chapter of the Future Farmers of America.
She enrolled in a class where students do an ag project and last year raised two other lambs, Gus and Wilbur.
Yoder, who hopes to be an ag teacher or work for an ag supplier, kept Gus and Wilbur at a farm outside of town, riding her bike there to feed and walk them. Only Gus grew enough to be shown. He was sold after the New Holland Fair, and Wilbur ended up going to auction as well.
"A friend of ours bought Gus," Yoder says. "We actually got to eat some of him. It was different, knowing you raised him.
"But he was pretty good."
She got Billy and Lily this spring. Her home is on the edge of the borough and there is a farm just behind it. She was lucky to find lodging for the lambs there.
She decided early on to walk the animals around her neighborhood.
"Well, I just figured the more people they're around, the better they are," she says. "They're more calm around people and calm is what you want when you show."
Amazed at first, many of the neighbors now are smitten, picking tasty leaves off trees to feed the two lambs.
Shy at first, the lambs now seem to enjoy their walks, Yoder says. She occasionally has to firmly remind the two that the neighbors' lawns are not lunch, however.
"Sometimes they get sidetracked," she says.
Yoder's dad, Karl, who is a welder, feeds and walks the lambs when his daughter is busy. Yoder also is the daughter of Susan Yoder of Lancaster.
"I enjoy it," he says. "I'm learning as much as she is."
He also enjoys the reaction of neighbors. About once a week, his daughter ties the two lambs to a tree in their front yard and gives them a bath. It's a traffic-stopper.
"I'm surprised there hasn't been an accident," he says.
Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024.
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