To the Rescue

Oh, no! I thought, with my heart sinking. Of the three chickens kept in the cage, I saw only one! "Howard!" I called, "There's only one chicken left! Something has gotten them!"

With a worried look, my husband approached the cage but then didn't seem too alarmed. I saw him take a stick, reach through the chicken wire and tip up an overturned box. Two very flustered chickens staggered out, their feathers ruffled and their combs drooping. "What happened?" I yelled, as they drank thirstily at the water pan.

He said they must have perched on the edge of the thin-board apple crate used as a nesting box, and it flipped over, penning them inside. "How did you know they were in there?" I asked incredulously. He had heard them fluttering and clucking as he walked up. A funny sight they were, too, the usually strutting, proud, black bantum rooster and a white leghorn hen, both looking thoroughly confused and deflated.

I couldn't believe it when, the next day, another one was trapped in the box! I think after freeing that one, Howard just left the box upside down.

Animals are unpredictable. The other night, our son, Greg, brought our lawn mower home from the farm in our truck. Assuming we were at church, they didn't knock, only unloaded and got ready to leave, though I was home and at last realizing they were here waved goodbye to them.

Later, as Howard and I were talking, I became aware that I had been hearing a dog bark for sometime. The steady, staccato barking made me say, "That sounds like Pebbles!" Upon investigating, I saw our son's small terrier with her front paws propped on the screen door demanding to be let in!

She must have gotten out of the family car that followed behind the truck! I hadn't even known she was here! She has stayed with us before when the family was away, so she was familiar with our house and obviously felt at home here. I let her in, and she ran to the kitchen where I poured some water in her bowl that was still here.

I tried to call Greg to tell him she was here, but he had obviously gone to bed. I reached our granddaughter who told her brother to come and get the dog. Greg told me the next day that Adam had come into his room about 11 p.m. saying, "Pebbles is at Mimi and Pa-Pa's house." We all laughed about it and thought it is was very cute that she opted to come in rather than find her way home several blocks away in the dark.

Animals are like people, in that they get themselves into predicaments where they need to be rescued. Jesus called us sheep, and we are apt to go astray or do something foolish at times, but thank God, we have a Savior, one who gives us the water of life and sets our feet on the right path.

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all," Isaiah 53:6. He is our Good Shepherd.