One More Song for the Maker, Chickenman

Just over two weeks ago, Robbie and I inherited six laying hens from a pastor friend of ours who was called to another church and moving out of the state. This same pastor friend also happened to be the one who taught a class we took on keeping backyard chickens. As my father-in-law was quick to point out, we literally inherited our teacher’s pets.

A few days before we picked up our chickens, we secured our backyard. We walked the privacy fence, looked for any holes under the house, leveled a steep hill to detract predators from climbing over. We found the shadiest spot for the position of the coop, bought pine shavings, wheat straw, organic feed and a waterer. We purchased a coop from an older couple west of town and asked our neighbors for help unloading and assembling it. We set out fresh bedding for the chickens, and then came the babes—all different colors, all different breeds. We gave each one a name: Marin (named for Marin County, California where we spent much of our honeymoon), Fanny Lou, Nina Simone, Nopalita, Lady Bird (named for our friend and church member) and Toby Ziegler (named for our favorite West Wing character). We became attached in an instant, learned their personalities, invited our parents over to meet the grandchicks, practiced picking them up, ate their delicious eggs and doted on them in public, showing people pictures of them on our phones.

Their second night with us, I had to be downtown for work until late. After a while, I noticed I’d missed four calls from Robbie. Then came the text: “I lost some chickens.” I called back to get more information. My husband was panicked: it was dark and he could find only two of our little brood of six. He’d checked the coop numerous times, under the house, under the porch, behind the shed, inside the shed, the coop again. He hadn’t heard any sounds of struggle—an indication that an opossum or raccoon had gotten inside the fence. Before we hung up, he said his plan was to hit the pavement and take a flashlight into the neighborhood to see if he could find any sign of our chickens, dead or alive.

I got home an hour later, and walked into a sad, dark house. Robbie was lying in a dark bedroom with a pillow over his face. He hadn’t had any luck finding them in the neighborhood. We discussed all the possible ways and reasons our chickens were gone: a predator had found its way in and made off with four of our girls; their wings weren’t clipped as well as we’d thought and they’d flown over the tall fence; there was some sort of hole or exit beneath our house that was accessible to them, but invisible to us. After all this positing, we concluded that we just weren’t ready, and we went to bed sad.

The next morning at 6 am, Robbie got up to let our two remaining chickens out of the coop and all six marched right out of their little door. He came back up to our bedroom with a huge grin on his face and a look of confusion. All six had been inside the coop all along, we discovered, just up on their roosting poles. Every time my sweet husband had lifted the lid of the coop to see if they were inside, they were roosting up on the top portion, the part of the coop in his hands. We were so excited to see them that morning and had a little party out back, in our PJs, with breakfast and coffee. We are still laughing at what those chickens were thinking each time they were tipped sideways in the dark that night. It would make a great cartoon…

I hope you get a good laugh from this story as you make your way through this week. We all spend so much time looking for what’s right before us, in front of us, inside us. We search for God, for ways to be faithful to him, for something to deliver us from present worry or strife. It’s not wasted time, but when we catch a glimpse of God living right where we live, we remember our deliverance has already been sent. Go well this week, remembering God is in our midst!

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