(Contentment –  even with green hair)

I’m back home now and I’m hen-less and egg-less. Will go to the supermarket later for the eggs but we won’t be getting hens. Some people and animals come into your life for just a short time and then they leave. But not before passing on a message or a lesson. What I can remember best from the hens is their one step after the other approach to life…… Sure they were cautious, but once the danger (usually me) passed by or stopped and backed away, then they continued one step after the other.

(Take the next step)

Another thing about the hens, they did their own foraging. Each day I presented them with a shovelful of feed and some “treats” but that wasn’t all they ate. They spent a lot of their time scratched around for tasty worms and insects. They could have so easily sat back and eaten the food provided but they took nourishment into their own hands, they maintained their independence and probably their good health.

(Celebrate the mistake)

Although I let them out in the mornings (or in the afternoon if I wanted an egg) I didn’t put them back in their pen, they went back in themselves, in their own time. I locked the gate when I found them tucked up together in their house. And the eggs… whenever possible they left their eggs in a place of their choosing, where I never found them.

(Find the beauty)

They remind me of Dr. Viktor Frankl who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning having survived life in a concentration camp. Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Viktor E. Frankl.

He could easily have included hens, Mairead.