Hear and appear: Defending the weak.

"Titus." I whisper urgently.  "Go get your gun."

Could there be any more thrilling words in a ten-year-old's day?

I am still stunned that no matter where that boy is on the two hundred acre farm, he hears and appears, a breathless apparition, squinting up towards the silver sky at the hunting hawks circling low and slow above our chickens.

Four weeks ago, twenty seven day-old chicks arrived at our country post office at 6am.  Having hatched a day earlier in Iowa,  they were rudely examined to determine their sex, placed in a shoe box, and overnight shipped to our Maryland farm in less than twenty four hours.

There are not many things in the world cuter than day-old chicks, except the look on a sleepy six-year-old's face when she awakes to a shoebox of chicks cheep-cheeping on her pillow.

Five weeks later, the chicks are now free-ranging teenagers.  No longer timid, they strut their latest feathery fashions along sparkly chicken wire.  The adolescent girls gossip in giddy groups under the shady vines, all the while terrorizing the local insect gangs.  

Poor, poor bugs.

A few things we've learned about chickens:

1.  They eat stink bugs whole.
2.  This has greatly reduced the stink bug population on my pillow.
3.  Chickens deposit odious, copious amounts of stink bug poop everywhere.
4.  They attract ominous hungry hawks and very large black snakes.
5.  They bring out the most protective instincts in 10-year old boys.

So the protector of his flock takes aim and lets the hawks know who's boss.  The birds of prey are free to hunt all the farm field mice they can eat in our fields.  They may swoop down on jackrabbits in the meadow and groundhogs in the corn...but these chickens are mine.

While he hasn't hit one yet, this is going to be a true test of wits.  A young man protecting the weak, defending the vulnerable, and caring for those entrusted to him just like his earthly father and his heavenly one.

Game on.  Bring it.  Amen.