getting dirty

We have grass in 90% of the backyard, but my children like to play in the one sliver of dirt in the back corner by the fence where we haven't bothered to landscape yet. They dig in it and add water to it and carry it around in buckets and sometime they even roll around in it. We call it their special "dirt patch" and it provides more entertainment than any of their toys ever have.

Once upon a time I claimed that Annike didn't need a bath very often. Then we had Sommer. Then they discovered dirt.  Now they take baths an awful lot. Usually because of dirt under the fingernails, or in their hair, or some sticky streak that has run down a chest and collected dirt.

In the dirt patch are some lizards that visit periodically. Annike, feeling pet-deprived, began building pretend habitats for the lizards and carrying around an empty terrerium. She kept roly polys in it for a while, but that wasn't satisfying her. Eventually she ended up with 2 baby blue-bellied lizards that were named, in a stroke of 4-year-old genius, "Lizzy #1" and "Lizzy #2". I insisted they would be kept outside, and she could keep them as long as she was willing to feed them. Why do mothers bother with these futile words?

Six hours after the cage was moved into the house for the first time, BOTH lizards went missing. They did turn up a few hours later when Papa emptied out the cage and discovered them buried in the dirt on the bottom. I soon found myself catching flies with a cup instead of swatting them, then lowering them gently into the cage. I caught ants and beetles and roly polys and hunted for wormy apples in our orchards to feed the lizards. We were going for a variety of bugs because we weren't sure what was edible, but it seemed to me that these tiny lizards could only eat the bugs that were also small enough to squeeze through the air holes in the roof of the cage, so was I really just adding critters to my home instead of feeding lizards? I felt a little indignant about it all because I am supposed to be a mother of GIRLS, so don't I get to avoid bug-catching, lizard-feeding, filthy fingernail scraping duty?

But you can't be afraid to get dirty in life. Life is full of things we never pictured ourselves doing. We avoid the dirt because it means extra work later... a bath, or a good scrubbing of something or someone. Or we avoid it because we don't like the way it makes us feel being dirty. I never want my life to be about keeping a white t-shirt crisp and ironed. Good clothes can be washed, and good stories are seldom clean. It is all part of the adventure.

We can't be afraid to dive into the muck in someone's life either. People's lives are rarely sparkly clean. Instead they are full of junk, full of garbage hidden below the surface, full of dirt. Mine included. Getting down into the dirty in someone's life often involves extra work. It involves loving people in a less than perfect state. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes a willingness to get dirty myself. But in the end it is all part of the adventure called doing life with others. And I never want to be afraid of it.

My girls aren't afraid to hold lizards, or catch bugs, or get dirty. And I hope one day that they aren't afraid to dive into the dirt in the lives of those they love. Hopefully with the idea of getting cleaner in the end. Because the dirtier we get, the better it feels to be clean.

We did have to release Annike's lizards after a few weeks of allowing them to reside in her room. She cried fat silent tears as she said goodbye to them, but put on a brave face because she knew it was the right thing to do. We weren't sure they were actually eating anything that we put in the cage. Unfortunately, we were only able to release one of the lizards as the other one had completely vanished. Better not to ask when or where it may have escaped... we will imagine that it is not running around my house and mysteriously ended up outside.

Life is sometimes sad, sometimes dirty, but never dull. And we are aren't afraid of what it holds.

P.S. The dirt in the back yard may be one reason that my children never have any clothes on... we have discovered it is easier to hose them off than to change outfits every hour. It is a system that works for us and helps us enjoy the dirt a little bit more...

This one was Sommer's favorite: a "fwoggy" that shared the terrerium with the Lizzys for a few days.

lost and found

Have you ever lost something dear to you?  And then spent hours upon hours trying to locate it... retracing steps, looking under every bush and rock and cranny where your precious object might be?

These kittens must be precious because my husband spent hours upon hours looking for them in our yard, around our barn, in the thorny bushes, in acres and acres of tall grass.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we found the kittens when they were 2 days old, and promptly moved them and their mother into our barn where they would be safer from the predators on our property (coyotes, foxes, snakes, hawks, and even our own chickens.)  Their feral mother, not at all warmed to the idea of us keeping her kittens, continued to care for them so long as she did not see us near them.  We were determined to handle them enough to tame them.

Despite our attempts at stealth while handling the kittens (and who can resist these fuzzy balls of kitten-ness?), every week or so, Calico Kitty (Momma Cat) found us out and moved them. The hunt would begin again as Christian spent hours bushwhacking to locate the helpless babies and restore them to safety in our barn.  Notable places he found them were in an empty cement container, in the blackberry brambles, in the chickens' nesting box, and even stuffed into the remaining ashes in our barbeque pit.

The feral mother was almost clever enough to outsmart my husband on her final move, and the kittens went missing for a week and a half... until we brought in reinforcements for a final sweep of the property and my sister found them stuffed between logs in the woodpile.

It must be nice to start life out so loved... so loved that someone would search high and low, thick and thin, not giving up until we are found.

The truth?  We are that loved, and more.  By a Savior who will search the brambles and the tall grass and even the darkest places of our hearts to find us and bring us back to a place of knowing Him.   

"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.  Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.  Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep'.  I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent." Luke 15:4-7

We kept one... Annike has dubbed her "Kitty Soft Paws", but they feel pretty sharp to me.

menagerie

I come from a long line of sensitive animal-lovers.  Growing up, my brother was always saving small animals from our cat and keeping them in cages as pets.  My ever-tender-hearted dad has been known to do things like nurse hummingbirds who flew into our window back to life. Once, after we kids felt sad about a fish my dad caught, he spent hours swishing it back and forth through the water until it finally recovered and swam away.  And my grandma has a bad habit of rescuing cats that don't need rescuing, then letting them have kittens underneath her bed.

But me?  Never.  That sensitive animal-loving gene most certainly escaped me.

This is why I am suddenly surprised to find myself in the midst of a relative menagerie.  There have always been the chickens, of course.  But they stick to the out of doors and have not bothered me too much.  Plus, these pets actually give quite a bit back in the form of organic eggs.

Next were the goldfish that Santa left under the Christmas tree.  We have had three at various times, but Freddy keeps dying.  The pet store may not have enough replacements.  Annike wants to know if we stop naming him "Freddy" if he will stop disappearing?

Somewhere along the way we began to feed Farrell cats, one of which is about to leave a litter of kittens in our barn.

Last weekend a starving parakeet flew into the yard, and of course we had to bring it inside and offer it some food... and some love... and a home.

This week we are bird-sitting my parents' pet Cockateel.  Between the two birds, our living room sounds like a tropical rainforest.  And looks like a pet store.

A Redtail hawk has been looking for a way into our hearts and seems to have adopted our front yard as a hang-out.  He is not the least bit perturbed by our presence as he sits directly outside our living room window.  There is no doubt that he has been in contact with humans before.  While he is helpfully chipping away at the ground squirrel population, he has an awfully friendly eye on our chickens.  One of them is now missing half of her tail.

My mom always said that she didn't want pets because people get attached to pets.  Then pets die.  Fortunately, Annike seems to have a good farm-girl's understanding about the death of animals, so this is not the issue I am having with the pets.

The thing that troubles me is all of the responsibility.  I am pretty much up to my eyes in responsibility and I am not sure I can add another feeding schedule to the list.  The last thing I need is one more mess-maker in the house.

........................................................................................................

Since I started writing this post, a few things have changed.  First, we gave both of the birds to my parents.  That was a huge break for my living room, but a disappointment for Sommer who got the most joy out of seeing Joey-bird on my shoulder.

The next thing that happened was the Ferrell cat we call "Calico Kitty" did not show up for her feeding one night.  We went hunting... and found a litter of 4 tiny kittens stashed in some of what Christian considers "barn art" (ie: something old that may resemble junk to other people).

Anyone want a handful of 2-day old kittens?!

I think I might be suckered into keeping one.  After all, every good farm needs a good barn cat. It's the kids' fault... they get so darned excited about the sweet cuddly baby animals.  I am in denial.  I don't know how it happened.  But I think we now have pets.