"There was a lamb where a lamb should not have been Thursday morning.
Dick Styba went to a storage garage he owns at 603 E. Ninth St. in Winona, noticed he had forgotten to padlock the one-stall building, stepped inside and found a little lamb.
It was baaaffling.
Styba uses the garage for storage and a workshop on a lot where his daughter Cindy Wobig and her son Scotty Wobig live. About thirty feet away from the garage door, a barking rottweiler on a rope greeted intruders.
"I went in to get a piece of lumber and there was a little guy, all calm," Styba said. "It scared me at first. When it moved. I said, 'What the hell is that?'
"It was about the size of a medium-sized dog."
Styba couldn't think of any friend or neighbor that might want to play a practical joke on him, and the garage, bordering a side street and alley, was usually locked.
He asked his 20-year-old grandson, Scotty, whether he or his mother knew anything about the lamb. He said no.
"It's all residential there. It's not like we're on the edge of town. It scared the hell out of me," Styba said.
The life-long Fourth Ward resident wondered what he was supposed to feed the thing.
After a few minutes, Styba hightailed it to the Winona Daily News with his story, leaving the padlock open as he had found it.
By the time he, a reporter and photographer returned, about one-half hour later, the lamb was gone.
For the second time within an hour, Styba was surprised and perplexed.
The Daily News photographer noticed sheep droppings on the floor of the garage, substantiating Styba's story but in no way solving the mystery.
"I'm glad it's out of here because I honestly didn't know what to do with it," Styba said. "I guess that shows it was a joke somebody was playing on me."
