"Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.
You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.'" (James 4:14-17)

We have a sad story to share...

On Sunday, (May 1, 2005) Steve and our children repaired our vegetable garden netting and set up our two remaining hens to fertilize the soil. We had left our chickens in our garden for a couple of weeks last Spring. Early Monday (May 2, 2005) morning, Niko awoke and heard clucking. He looked outside his bedroom window and saw our white leghorn hen ("Snowball") in the mouths of two big dogs. As Niko cried out to his daddy, our family jumped out of bed and ran outside. The dogs had already killed our red sex link hen ("Red"). We were able to scare the dogs off, but although there were a lot of feathers, Snowball's body was nowhere to be found. When we gathered together for family worship, we searched the scriptures. We found Proverbs 12:10, "A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal."

Michelle had learned to draw pictures to process feelings. So, Michelle had our children draw pictures. She was amazed at their abilities to draw. We collected up feathers to make quill pens. We also took this incident as an opportunity to meet our neighbors, whose 14-acre lot is adjacent to ours. We were only guessing that the dogs were theirs. We planned to go the neighbors around dinner time after Steve came home from work.

As we were getting ready, Michelle looked out our front door window and she was speechless. She was trying to talk. Niko was afraid to look. There stood "Snowball" on the driveway about 30 feet away from our front door. The feathers underneath her wings were missing, and she only had one tail feather left. Steve got the animal wound spray and Niko said something about slaughtering. Steve later shared that he wasn't even thinking about slaughtering Snowball. He was just happy and amazed that our hen had survived two dogs and previously a hawk, which had gotten our red sex link hen ("Rosey") last November. We were obviously emotionally attached to our pet chicken.

We put "Snowball" safely back in her coop, then drove over to meet our neighbors. Sure enough, the two dogs (possibly half German shepherd and half retriever) were in their front yard. As Steve got out of the van, the dogs approached him. We prayed for the Lord to keep Steve safe. We knew that it was natural for dogs to guard their property. Michelle suggested throwing a stick or something. Steve picked up a few rocks from the driveway. Accidentally, one hit our van - a little comic relief. :) As Steve tried to make his way to the front door, both dogs escorting him, he found their dog toys. He managed to throw one toy. Then, he made it to the neighbor's door. Our neighbors weren't home. Steve later shared with us that the dogs were pushing him past his comfort level. He said that it didn't help that he knew that they had already killed an animal earlier in the day. We planned to go to our neighbor's again on Tuesday... Lord willing. Turns out our chicken story was not yet done.

Having studied our James verse: "Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.'" (James 4:14-17) We, including Niko, get it now. We're trying to gain perspective with our plans and say "Lord willing". :)

We had been planning on slaughtering both of our hens in a couple of months. We had new chicks due to arrive on (Friday) May 20 and understood that the older chickens would fight them being added to the coop. We could no longer eat "Snowball" since we had used the medication on her - and we weren't sure if we wanted to anyways. We talked for a while and decided that it didn't make much sense to nurse her back to health just to slaughter her as soon as she was well. She looked like she was in a great deal of pain, so we decided to sacrifice her/put her out of her misery. Now we know why people don't name their chickens and we are going to have a different mindset with the next batch.

After "sacrificing" Snowball, we had some teachable moments with Niko, explaining the difference between killing a chicken and killing babies (abortion). God is very clear that killing animals is acceptable, and that killing babies is an abomination and was worthy of the death penalty in the Old Testament.

We know that God allowed this week's trial for a reason... "we know that God causes all things to work together for those who love God" (Romans 8:28). What good came out of all this... as a family we were learning how to properly grieve our losses. We got to meet our nice neighbors. We gained perspective in our chicken venture.

We started anew with our brood of chicks...

Page created 12/26/05