I am so enjoying having our chickens, and since the kids love being outside with them, I've had a lot of opportunity to observe them, and it's eye opening and convicting! Maybe I'm making too many connections here, but work with the word pictures, k?
The smallest chicken, Spot, gets picked on by the older chickens a lot. Some of this is normal for establishing pecking order, but then they broke the skin. Apparently blood attracts the other chickens and they will peck the bleeding chicken, basically, to death. Gross and disturbing!
So I've been watching Spot a lot, and letting her out of the coop during the day so she doesn't get pecked to death. In the afternoon, I let the other girls out to run for a couple hours before dark. One day, they were all obsessed watching Spot eat some leftovers I'd thrown out. The chickens were "whining" and were running back and forth and pecking the fence. Get this- the door was open behind them. They were free! But they couldn't figure that out because they were so focused on what they didn't have! I sheepishly wonder how often I'm so focused on my discontent and my envy (major personal defects!), and the door to what I want is wide open right behind me!
I've also observed that Spot really wants to be with the other chickens. One evening I relented and allowed her to sleep in the coop- her wound was doing better, and I smeared her up with petroleum jelly, hoping that the bigger birds wouldn't bother it. Nope, they picked at her again even worse than before- but she still wanted to be with them! I wonder what I am hanging out with that's "picking me to pieces"? I don't think there's any people that are bad for me; I'm thinking more about habits- ahem, facebook?
Finally, I've been watching Spot run around, acting like everything is fine- eating, scratching, running around, hanging out with the other chickens- and she has a gaping hole in the back of her head! Do you do that? Do you act like everything is fine when you have a gaping wound in your head? . . . or your heart? Oh, that's just me? good, then I'm glad I've been hiding it.
