When I was a kid and we lived in Higbee Colorado, there was
a family that babysat us for one summer.
They were pretty rough and tumble, which fit in just fine for me and my
brother and sister. I won’t go into all
the details (I have talked about that in a previous story), but I did learn
some interesting things that summer.
A couple of them involved chickens. Don’t jump to in conclusions here, it was pretty tame stuff. The family in question probably had up to 200 free range chickens, give or take what the All Night Coyote Diner feasted on. They were a great source of enjoyment to four wild boys that fancied themselves cowboys. There were many an hour spent roping chickens. For anyone reading this, you need to understand that roping chickens is much safer than roping geese! As some point I will expound on that story, but the mental scars have yet to heal.
Anyway, we spent many hours improving our chicken roping skills and were actually quite good by mid-summer. Needless to say, the chickens were a little skittish! At one point there were no chickens laying eggs and we were banned from roping chickens. Which led to about a week or so of moping around trying to think of something to rope….until my Dad showed us a couple of new tricks.
One of them had to do with catching and holding a chicken’s head on the ground and quickly drawing a straight line in front of their beak. The goofy things would lay there for hours, staring down that line. My Dad said he would drive in to pick us up and there would be 40-50 chickens laying on the ground staring down a line. You would think that was a lot, but that was only 10 or so apiece. That little trick was used for a couple of weeks, we used to see how many we could catch and hypnotize before the first one woke back up. The other involved holding one and tucking their head under their wing. I guess that had somewhat of the same effect. Once you got them still, you could sit them on the ground and they would sit like that for hours. Needless to say, we were easily entertained. This was probably some of the tamest things that we did that summer. Who thought you could have so much fun hypnotizing chickens?
This leads to this thought:
A couple of them involved chickens. Don’t jump to in conclusions here, it was pretty tame stuff. The family in question probably had up to 200 free range chickens, give or take what the All Night Coyote Diner feasted on. They were a great source of enjoyment to four wild boys that fancied themselves cowboys. There were many an hour spent roping chickens. For anyone reading this, you need to understand that roping chickens is much safer than roping geese! As some point I will expound on that story, but the mental scars have yet to heal.
Anyway, we spent many hours improving our chicken roping skills and were actually quite good by mid-summer. Needless to say, the chickens were a little skittish! At one point there were no chickens laying eggs and we were banned from roping chickens. Which led to about a week or so of moping around trying to think of something to rope….until my Dad showed us a couple of new tricks.
One of them had to do with catching and holding a chicken’s head on the ground and quickly drawing a straight line in front of their beak. The goofy things would lay there for hours, staring down that line. My Dad said he would drive in to pick us up and there would be 40-50 chickens laying on the ground staring down a line. You would think that was a lot, but that was only 10 or so apiece. That little trick was used for a couple of weeks, we used to see how many we could catch and hypnotize before the first one woke back up. The other involved holding one and tucking their head under their wing. I guess that had somewhat of the same effect. Once you got them still, you could sit them on the ground and they would sit like that for hours. Needless to say, we were easily entertained. This was probably some of the tamest things that we did that summer. Who thought you could have so much fun hypnotizing chickens?
This leads to this thought:
Are we like those chickens in our Christian walk? Dumbly staring down that line, leaving
ourselves open to all kinds of attacks from satan? Or are we studying and praying so that the
devil doesn’t have a chance to grab us by the head and draw a line in front of
us? How about those of us who allow our
heads to be tucked under our wings? We
don’t say anything to anybody about Christ; we just hide in the four walls of
our church? At different times I am both
of these chickens.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about
like a roaring a lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing
that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.
1 Peter 5:8-9
Ohhhhhh!!!! That was good!
ReplyDeletethanks, Kevin. You can learn something from all God's creatures.....even chickens!
DeleteGreat story and lesson! Thanks
ReplyDeleteThanks for stoppin' by, Michelle. Glad you like it.
Delete