Every day God brings us blessings to brighten our lives. At times He surprises us with a gift we never asked for and never thought we needed.
Over the years, as my kids were growing up, we raised a menagerie of animals in our rural Indiana home. Stray dogs and cats, hamsters and fish were our typical pets. Never once did we own any birds. So one mid-summer evening when a chicken mysteriously arrived on our property, my husband and I were not prepared. We had no idea what to expect when we first noticed it darting around in the corn field across the road. Initially it was shy, but became quite friendly as soon as we offered it some of the sunflower seeds we put in our bird feeders. We queried the neighbors but no one had lost a chicken. Perhaps it had fallen off a truck headed to the county fair. Nevertheless, we had a decision to make. What were we going to do with this unexpected blessing?
For the first few nights, the chicken roosted in the lower branches of our neighbor’s pine trees. Every morning, it came over to eat more sunflower seeds. We weren’t sure if it was a male or a female since it was very young. However, it became obvious, as soon as it began crowing, that we had a rooster as our new pet. My husband named him Fred.
Not knowing anything about the care of chickens, we made a quick trip to the local farm store. We left with chicken food, several books on poultry and a portable chicken coop that happened to be on sale. The surprise chicken was becoming expensive and we weren’t even going to get any eggs out of this deal. A friend offered to give us 2 young hens that were not yet laying to add some females to our newfound flock. Thus we gained Wilma and Ethyl.
However, with 3 chickens now, the little coop we bought wasn’t big enough so we set out to build a chicken house with a fenced-in run. We finished it just before winter set in. Fred and his girls spent the cold months roosting comfortably under the heating lamp in their new place. Soon Wilma and Ethyl actually started laying eggs and we felt like we were chicken farmers at last!
But then we decided that just 2 hens didn’t produce enough eggs. In the spring, we made another trip to the farm store to pick out some baby chicks. We made an incubator of sorts out of a metal wash tub and a heat lamp to house them until they were big enough to go out to the chicken house with the older chickens. Our flock enlarged into a variety of hens who now produce white, brown, speckled and blue eggs.
Fred grew into a magnificent rooster with shimmering feathers of gold and turquoise. His girls have depended on him to keep a watchful eye for any predators and call out a warning to gather back to the coop for safety. He has dutifully carried out his job to care for his flock over the last 4 1/2 years but this fall he began to slow down. We found him with his head under his wing napping more than usual. When he stopped roosting and lay down in the bottom of the chicken house, we knew the end was near. Then this last week, our beloved rooster died.
I never imagined that a chicken could have so much personality. Fred wasn’t mean like most roosters. He exhibited his dominance by jumping up on my husband’s back only once while he was bent over gathering eggs. Most of the time, he just wanted to be with his humans, following us around to see what we were doing. He loved to crow any time of the day as if to say, “I’m here! I’m here! Look at me.” I miss his special greeting already.
Every day God brings us blessings to brighten our lives. At times He surprises us with a gift we never asked for and never thought we needed. The unexpected blessing of a feisty little rooster named Fred who dropped from heaven one mid-summer day, grabbed our hearts and changed our perspective forever. Our home is just too quiet now that he is gone.
