Mother Goose Vists the Farm

               We recently had an incident in which a fox chased a chicken and a dog chased the fox. It was quite Mother-Goose-like and exciting at the same time because everything turned out okay.

                We have an old hen named Henrietta. She’s the only one left of our original flock of chickens. She gets to roam the yard all by herself, pecking at the ground at her leisure, which she primarily prefers to do around the area of the bird feeder. She can be feisty at times, but she does have some winning ways about her. She follows me around when I’m out in the yard and sits on the arm of the Adirondack chair while I read or write. She will greet us when we come home, running up to the car almost as if she’s asking, “Where have you been?”

                She was out in the yard a few weeks ago while we were in the living room. We heard a commotion and dashed out the front door to find that a very large red fox had gotten hold of her. Chris yelled at it and the fox turned and looked at her, and went right back to attacking Henrietta.  But Mr. Fox didn’t see Faye, our dog, who made a giant leap from the porch and began a hot pursuit, chasing the fox across the field, across the driveway, into the woods and down into the picnic area.

                Faye came back looking a little sheepish at first because she isn’t supposed to go that far from the house, but when she heard us cheering her, she began to look quite proud of herself. We used to call her “an old Carolina squirrel hound.” Now we have dubbed her “the fox hound.” She’s a rescue dog from a kill shelter down south. She’s mostly a Chesapeake lab and has a bit of a stubborn streak in her, but she’s a great dog.

                So let’s see, how’s that John Denver song go about “Grandma’s Feather Bed?”

“It’d hold eight kids, four hound dogs and a piggy we stole from the shed…” Well, we don’t have a feather bed but we’ve got a dog and a cat and eight laying chickens and an old hen that lives in the garage. And maybe in the spring we’ll be adding a beehive (not the hairdo, but real live honey bees)!

                One thing I know at this stage of my life that I will say over and over: There is a natural flow to life: Fox chases chicken, dog chases fox, and all turns out just the way it’s supposed to if we don’t get in the way. Life events will carry us along with a steady sense of well-being, even though things can get disrupted from time to time and upset our equilibrium. But if we don’t spend all our time focusing on what’s wrong, but celebrate what’s right, and especially what turns out right, we’ll not only make it through difficult times more easily and peacefully, but find more acceptance of the natural flow of living on this planet.