His Eye is on the Chicken

It was just an ordinary chicken--

black and white speckled feathers, three crooked toes, beady black eyes.

But with a very UNordinary squawk.

The wife and the husband who were in the office trying to work through a difficulty,

suddenly heard a strange sound that seemed to be coming from the kitchen.

"A chicken?"

A dog?

"It's a kid!" the husband says.

There it comes again! "Errr-or-awk!"  Some sick sound! Plus, what would an animal be doing in the kitchen? Except that Carrie was out doing chores late. Had she let something in?

 

Without further ado, both run to the kitchen, Mom wiping tears from her eyes, wondering if one of the kids is blowing a strange whistle, or is it some neighbor dog????

And there they see it, the black and white speckled chicken, craning its neck and making the most woeful squeaks and squawks you ever heard.

This was one time there had to literally be a frog in the throat. Every cluck was a croak. Every squawk was an anguished gaggy howl that sounded like a cross between a --

well, a coyote and a --glurp, whatever that is.

Obviously something had gotten stuck in its craw.

Stuck in its craw.

We know something about things stuck in the craw. You don't really want it there. You try to get it out. But it just stays stuck.

Wife and husband laugh through tears. They laugh and laugh and laugh. The chicken croaks, the wife laughs. The chicken howls and chokes. The husband doubles over laughing. They try to capture the chicken, which Carrie had brought in because of its strange problem, and it skids across the floor and glurps and croaks and screeches.

The wife fills a container with water and the husband captures the hen and a drop of water gets choked down.  A drop here and a croak there. Mom rubs the poor hen's neck and craw. More drops of water. Let the hen go. Mottled feathers skid across the linoleum again.

Somebody bigger came to the rescue.

Living water mixes with earth's problems.

Softens the hardness, shows mercy to choking humanity.

Man laughs at stupid extremities that ought not to have happened, stuckness that shouldn't be stuck.

But do not the imploring, choking cries that others laugh at, or, that others don't hear at all, 

get heard by the "Somebody Bigger Than You and I"?

Somebody Bigger did hear; and sent a choking chicken to dispel the gloom.

Thanks, little mottled black and white choking chicken!