A Dying Tradition : After 20 years, urbanization drives shepherd from the hills of Calabasas.

It’s an old shepherd’s trick:

When a new lamb dies, skin the carcass. Then, when another sheep has twins, cover one of the twins with the dead lamb’s skin. The mother of the dead animal will pick up the scent of her offspring and nurse the twin.

According to 63-year-old Luigi Viso, this practice, handed down to him by his father in Sicily, has worked for centuries to preserve family flocks. But there is no trick that will save the shepherd legacy in Viso’s family.

His son refuses to don the mantle of a shepherd. And so, three generations in the subtle, centuries-old art of shepherding will soon come to an end on a lonely Calabasas hilltop.

“The boy doesn’t want no part of it,” says Viso, looking out from the tiny compound he has built above Las Virgenes Road. “He’s single. An electrician for the DWP. No family. What else can I do?”

Viso’s question, heavy with his Sicilian accent, lingers in the air.

Beyond his son’s lack of interest, modern-day developments are hastening the end of the Viso family tradition. Two commercial projects are planned on his leased pasture land. And while he can cope with an occasional hungry coyote, he says the more frustrating threat to his flock has been persistent urban thieves.

By the end of the year, Viso’s menagerie of goats, Australian sheep dogs and five dozen sheep--a Calabasas institution for 20 years--will be herded from the land by the two retail centers. The Baldwin Co., which leases Viso the land for his compound just above the intersection of Las Virgenes and Agoura roads, will build a 200,000-square-foot commercial center there. Next door, where Viso’s sheep sometimes graze, Pazar Associates will begin constructing a smaller retail development.

With no one to carry on for him, Viso says he may retire in Reno, perhaps with a few head of sheep.

“Since I was 5 years old, I was with sheep,” Viso says, tucking his ear beneath a wool cap. “I’m so close to them, it looks like the sheep raised me. I like shepherding for a hobby. You watch TV. Somebody else plays golf. I do it just to pass the time.”

But that life has taken a stressful turn.

“Twenty years ago, you could stay here comfortably,” Viso says of his Calabasas retreat. “You could keep the gate open and nobody would bother you. You can’t keep the gate open anymore. Too many people come in all the time. Steal a lamb, steal a dog. I’m tired of it.”

Viso toiled for many years as a brick mason after coming to the United States in 1949. But being a shepherd, even part-time, was all that ever really mattered.

Every morning, Viso wakes before dawn to release the animals from their ramshackle pen, and they spill onto the grassy hillsides.

If one spot is overgrazed, Viso hauls his flock to fresh grass. Nearby landowners are grateful--the sheep trim their greenery enough to satisfy local fire officials.

“Everybody calls them lawn mowers,” Viso laughs.

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Viso, however, has his own name for each sheep. There’s Linda, Julia, Milkshake and Willard, named after television weatherman Willard Scott.

But when Viso moves the flock, he calls on his sheep dogs, which nip at the heels of the nervous creatures to herd them. Often he speaks to the dogs in a mixture of Sicilian and American cuss words.

“You can’t speak Sicilian with the sheep,” he says. “They don’t know anything. They’re dumbbell sheep.”

Ironically, it was Viso’s son who brought Dad back into the family business.

“My kid wanted a sheep,” Viso says. “We kept this baby sheep in the back yard. Then there was another and another. Then I came here. I used to have 1,400 sheep.”

But a hobby that he could once support by selling wool soon became a financial hardship as wool prices plummeted. Most of the sheep were eventually sold.

With no profit in shepherding, Viso takes pleasure in the little things: Milking the sheep, making picorino cheese, delivering baby lambs. But it will soon end. Wherever he goes with what’s left of the flock, it will be a one-way trip, Viso says.

“What the hay,” he shrugs, as he watches the sheep settle down for the night. Then he spies a wayward lamb taking off with her mother. His instincts kick in, and he chases the lamb into the sunset.