...every winged fowl after its kind...
Last night at the supper table (there was peas, corn bread with peppers in it, chicken cooked with potatoes and onions, a superb [*smile*] meal,) in between the chaos of passing and the first few moments of silence when we just start eating, Caleb shouted "LOOK Y'all" and pointed out the window.
Now if you've never been in our house, let me tell you about it. Right where we eat almost all of our meals (the only exception being on Wednesday nights and when we have company over and can't fit all the folks at one table [only then do we participate in age segregation] =) is a extremely large picture window. Lots of times we've watched kittens play around and fight with each other, half grown puppies play what looked a lot like football with a pine cone, and wild rabbits come to munch our grass. It's very entertaining.
But back to last night... Caleb pointed and low and behold (*'nother smile*) a flock of birds flying in a HUGE 'V' shape. This was a very long V. So long that I think that the bird at the end probably didn't feel like he was flying at all! We thing it must have been Geese (though I didn't hear any honking) because they were flying southeast. Daddy said they were early. Then we got started on a hole 'nother conversation about birds, and V's and, and "About how far south did these birds go any ways?" and then Caleb started telling us about his science book hes been reading for school, and Mr. Pasteur and his experiments with Spontaneous Generation, and about some birds, that as he put it "Ate a lot and got real fat and laid some eggs and then flew off a long ways and died."
And so we had a good discussion about all that last night at the supper table, And also about how some type of butterflies can get blow off or carried off their course some how, and still manage to get to where they need to be. And all that fits into their teeny tiny little brain! And the best thing that man can come up with a GPS that's like, what? a thousand maybe?(probably way more) times larger than a butterfly brain??!!! And all it knows to do when it gets of course is to say "Off Route. Recalculate?"
God new what he was doing when he gave animals instincts!
Something Told The Wild Geese
By Rachel Field
Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, "frost."
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.
Anna
Picture Credit: Laura took it last year when our pond froze over during an Arctic Blast. (hence the pine cones,
we were trying to see how far we could make them slide. :-) Winter is on the way!
