Don’t Stick Your Neck Out

Posted on by H.J. Hill

We have backyard chickens. They are silkies. They came after three of the bulldogs and provide amazing entertainment for humans and dogs. The dogs are still at a loss of what to make of them and any attempt to introduce them further could end up, what’s the word…badly.

The bulldogs might not even mean any harm to the white, fluffy, two-legged creatures, but in an attempt to play, cavernous bulldog mouths have been known to close a little too tightly and all of a sudden the whole thing ends up…well, as I said…badly.

Years ago, a rooster that lived in our country barn was found dead inside his pen. He was headless. The carcass was otherwise intact. There was no sign of forced entry and no sign of trauma to the body except his head was missing. Completely gone. It was never found. We wondered about that for years until one evening when the settling chickens in our backyard run showed me how it could have happened. The hens closest to the outside of the flock stuck their heads through the holes in the thick wire wall. A tempting target in the dark for a passing skunk. Or dog.

The chickens pay attention to the dogs. They must in order to survive. The dogs never stop being predators no matter how calm and domesticated they appear. Day after day the chickens live in the moment. When the dogs approach the pen, the hens stare. They keep on with their business – pecking, eating, scratching, clucking, setting, but they never cease to be observant, alert, and ready.

We have a little hen that I call Skinnyhead because her topknot is smaller and narrower than all the others. She is the boldest of the flock, at least when it comes to staring down the bulldogs. Skinnyhead locks onto Stella with her sharp eyes and Stella returns the favor. Skinnyhead may be attracted to Stella’s big bulldog eyeballs so I have to encourage her to keep back a few steps, out of reach of the chicken’s quick beak. Meanwhile Stella waits to see if the skinny head of the chicken will come poking through the pen wall so she can check it out with her curious bulldoggy mouth.

Refusing to stick your neck out around a predator is common sense, not cowardice, and I am pleased that, for all her boldness, Skinnyhead has kept her head. Thus far, no close encounters of the bulldog/chicken kind have occurred, and I expect that to continue so long as no chicken sticks her neck out.

 

©2016 H.J. Hill All Rights Reserved.

 

 

The Louder We Are, The Less We Hear

Posted on by H.J. Hill

Peace and quiet – the words always fit together. If we leave out the quiet, the peace is never completely …well, peaceful. Shooting wars are loud; arguments can be loud, if not on the outside, on the inside. Loud can be uncomfortable. It can damage your hearing even if it doesn’t damage your eardrums.

When the bulldogs start barking, they don’t hold back. Full volume with no shutoff and no timer. You can hold your hands up, you can say, “Shhh!”, and you can start barking orders yourself. But when they are in full voice, a single human can’t compete. At that point, everybody is hearing the noise, but no one can hear what is being said.

“Hey!” is my favorite go-to word at those moments. I can’t drown them out. It doesn’t matter. “Hey!” is an attention grabbing word. It doesn’t have any other purpose or meaning. If I shout it long enough, loud enough, I will eventually insert it into a narrow window in the barking and one bully will pause, then another, and so on.

At last, I can hear and be heard. Whether I am obeyed or not is another matter entirely.

I believe we are guilty of shouting at each other and at God more than we are willing to admit. When we get loud, we can’t hear. Take a breath. Lower the volume. Listen in the quiet for the still, small voice of the Lord. (1 Kings 19:11-12 KJV)

“Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother…” Psalm 131:2 KJV

No matter what we are trying to say, the louder we are, the less we hear. The less we hear, the less we learn.

 

©2016 H.J. Hill All Rights Reserved.

 

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Stuffed Animals

Posted on by H.J. Hill

There is being in love with the idea and then there is being in love with the reality. Before Stella came, I was only in love with the plush toy fantasy of having another dog. The soft, sweet-smelling, no fleas, no ticks, no shedding, no chewing, no whining, no barking, housebroken, quiet when I wanted, active and playful in the way I liked, easy, cheap, wind-up toy idea of another dog. I did not think that I had enough energy for anything more. Surprise, surprise. I did. (God knows what He is doing.)

I like soft things, plush things, colorful things. I confess it – I have a stuffed animal collection. Not every plush animal qualifies; only the ones that jump out at me from the store shelf or the ones people give me. I have been collecting them for 25 years. I have around 100. That only averages to four new ones per year. Not an overwhelming collection (except according to one or two non-collectors in my family).

Of course, the bulldogs love their soft toys, too, and for that reason, they are not allowed in my room unaccompanied. They might just like mine right into their giant bulldoggy mouths. (You can see the results of their love in the picture above.)

So what happened when Snoopey was invited into my room on a quick pass while I retrieved some items? She has been in there before and, I suppose, was feeling quite comfortable. One bound and she was on my bed.  A few quick head tosses and the part of my stuffed animal collection that she could reach went flying. She didn’t grab any. That was going to come next. Maybe she was clearing out the competition. I put a quick end to what could have been a stuffed animal massacre.

Stella has been sneakier. I keep a plush dog-shaped pad on my easy chair that is specifically made for microwaving as a neck warmer. Always the hoarder and silent stalker, Stella sticks her head in from behind, even when I am sitting right there, and pulls at the neck warmer. The ploy does not work. I feel the move and stop her. She has five soft toys in her bed, but there is always room for one more, especially one that doesn’t belong to her.

Coveting comes so easily to us, dogs and humans, and most times it is not based on need. It is based on the fear that we are not going to get what we want or the envy that someone else already has it.

Covetousness pulls us into its trap and we don’t even realize that we are trapped. You can see it in a dog that is guarding a full bowl of food but reaches over to snatch the portion in his neighbor’s. Or in King David with his multiple wives who reaches into another man’s home and takes the only wife his servant had. (2 Samuel 11:2-4: Read the whole story. It did not end well.) The difference is that the dog is not under the commandment not to covet and we, being humans, are – for our neighbor’s good and for our own.

“Thou shalt not covet…any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”  Exodus 20:17 KJV

 

©2016 H.J. Hill All Rights Reserved.