Source A: The lambing field at dusk

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The lamb was born just after sunset, when the field had turned the colour of wet slate. I rubbed it with a towel while its mother stood over us, making a low, impatient sound. Across the valley, the windows of the holiday cottages were bright. From there, the field would have looked like a dark patch between the road and the woods. From where I knelt, it was a place full of small things which could go wrong before morning.

We had moved the ewes close to the house for lambing. We checked fences, brought vulnerable animals inside and kept a light near the gate. None of that made supervision unnecessary. A fox could find a weak lamb while a person was in the shed fetching a bottle. I had learned not to describe a quiet field as a safe one. Quiet meant that I had to look more carefully.

The fox appeared beside the hawthorn as I finished with the towel. Its ears caught the last of the light. It did not charge or snarl. It waited, watching the space between me and the ewe. I lifted the lamp and walked towards it until it slipped into the hedge. A few seconds later, something rustled farther along. It would try another angle. Somewhere beyond the field there might be young waiting for whatever it could carry back.

People ask whether I hate foxes. Sometimes they ask with an answer already arranged on their faces. I do not hate them. I also cannot leave a newborn lamb exposed in order to demonstrate that I understand a predator’s hunger. The lamb is an animal too. Its life does not become a lesser claim because a farmer is responsible for it, or because it may one day form part of a business transaction.

By midnight, the lamb was feeding. I moved the pair into a sheltered pen and checked the gate twice, once because it needed checking and once because I was tired enough to doubt the first check. At dawn, a guest from a cottage stopped to photograph the field. She had seen a fox from her window and told me how beautiful it was. I said that it was. Then the ewe called, and I went to see what she needed.

Beauty was a true description, but it did not cover the night. Neither would the word enemy. The work lay between those words: fencing, watching, intervening, and beginning again when the next ewe grew restless. I washed the towel and hung it where it would be ready.

Source B: From The Explorer’s Daughter — Kari Herbert

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 6–7).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about conflicting attitudes towards animals when human livelihoods are involved.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.