Chickens and Bluejays 3

There were a lot of mouths to feed and not enough money. To help make ends meet, we got our hands on a little flock of baby chicks who had been brought into the world as part of a class project in our local elementary school. We brought home the whole mess of 'em and then started reading books like, "How to Raise Chickens in Your Backyard".

They were really cute at first... Little peeping fluffy yellow balls that fit in the palm of your hand. As they grew into beautifully feathered hens and roosters, it was fun to watch them range about our yard and observe their habits and their way of life. It was cool how they stuck together. But by the end of our "chicken adventure" a couple of years later, I grew to hate the darn things.

They were so mean to each other. If there was some poor chicken in their midst which was a little different, or sick or had an injury, the other chickens would go after it. Peck, peck, peck. All day long. Peck, peck, peck. I couldn't stand it. Peck, peck, peck. If not rescued by us and isolated where it could recover, it could be a long, slow death.

On the other side of the yard from where our chicken coop stood, there is a beautiful old oak tree whose branches stretch wide and tall. Not only do several swings hang from it, hoping to make our yard a welcome place for the children who come to play there, but it produces a bounteous crop of acorns in late summer, which our local bluejays come to feast on. I have counted up to 14 bluejays out there at one time, but usually they only come in ones and twos. It doesn't matter how few or how many or how often, though. When a bluejay shows up, the cry goes through the house, "There's a bluejay! There's a bluejay!" and everyone flocks to the window to see. Their markings are so distinct and beautiful.

As David began to approach the middle grades in elementary school, he would come home day after day, a wounded little warrior -- hurt deeply by the taunts and teases and mean things that a lot of the other children would say to him because of his differences. He was definitely at the bottom of the pecking order... He was understandably having difficulty coping and I was running out of things to say that would help.

I remember the day that I suddenly realized the analogy that was in our own backyard.

"David, what would happen if a bluejay landed in the chicken coop and for some reason it wouldn't be able to fly back out... Say it had a broken wing or something so it couldn't fly away, and it had to stick around with the chickens while it healed. What do you think would happen to it?"

David knew that it would be picked on and pecked to death...

"Well, Dave, those people who pick on you at school are just being ugly old chickens, and you are the most beautiful bluejay I've ever seen. There's nothing wrong with you... there's something wrong with them."

He got it. And we reminded him again and again whenever he told us about another hurt at school. It wasn't long before he was able to weather the difficulties on his own and didn't need to bring them to us anymore.

So thanks to the chickens and the bluejays that God sent to our backyard, David grew up with a pretty balanced view of himself and the rest of the world... As he got older, he began to connect with a few other bluejays by the end of highschool he had developed a whole circle of friends that share his passion for computer games and Star Wars and doing homework.

I have to say, that David had a lot of help from his older brother... Andrew became a sanctuary for him. David would go to him at recess and tell him the other kids were picking on him and Andrew would square up his shoulders, go over there and lecture them. "If you're going to give my brother a hard time, you're going to have to go through ME." When they got to highschool, Andrew, two years older, made room at "his" cafeteria table for him, and David slid right into his circle of friends. By the time he was finished high school, David had transitioned to his own circle of friends... And one or two of those chickens from back in elementary school had even turned into the most beautiful of bluejays themselves... While David was home over Christmas break,there was a whole flock of them in his sister's basement rec. room one day. (She has more room for a party like this one.) They started right after lunch and had all brought their computers and game systems and controllers and monitors and all manner of electronic "stuff", networked their computers together and played interactive computer games until the wee hours of the next morning. David and his friend, which included brother Andrew, were in "heaven". For one day at least!