Chicken Rescue
I am a DINOSAUR!
Normally I post about writing or books…but it’s summer and things are slow so I thought I’d treat you all to a chicken story.
Yesterday I was driving my daughter home from her grandmother’s house when she called out from the back seat.
“Chickens!”
“What?”
“Chickens! Over there! The chickens are out!”
About three blocks away from her grandparents’ house, five chickens live in a backyard coop. When she was four or five, it was an adventurous walk to go down and visit them and poke bits of grass through the wire for them to peck at. When she learned to ride a bike, she could zip down to check on the chickens and see how they were faring.
And now they were loose! Emergency!
I pulled over and we hurried back half a block to check. Sure enough, the two white chickens with red crowns were pecking happily outside the pen. The single brown one and two black-and-white speckled ones, apparently more peaceful, were still inside the coop.
My daughter went up to knock on the back door to let the owners know their chickens were out. No answer.
Okay. Chicken rescue was underway!
I thought I could just pick them up and toss them gently back into the pen. I edged toward one. It eyed me and edged away.
Now, I have just been listening to a podcast all about dinosaurs. And it was heavy on the “birds are really dinosaurs” thing. And this chicken was really giving me a very nasty glare. The closer I got, the more vicious its claws looked. Velociraptor vicious. Seriously. I inched a tiny bit near and it sprinted away on bright yellow legs that looked very muscular indeed.
No way was I going to be able to pick this tiny little T. rex up.
It led me on a chicken-chase around the coop twice before I had the bright idea of telling my girl to stand by the coop entrance. I shuffled behind the two chickens and waved my arms. She blocked them when they tried to dart to one side, and between us we whooshed them into the coop and shut the door smartly. The three in-coop chickens did not make a break for it. Success!
It’s not often that my work days are interrupted by chicken rescue. Very exhilarating, really.
We drove away quickly just in case they found whatever hole in the fence let them escape in the first place. It would just be too stressful to go through the whole thing again.
Read MoreHighlights Stands Up for ALL Kids
Proud to have three of my books published by these fine folks! The CEO of Highlights Magazine says, “Our company’s core belief…is that ‘Children are the world’s most important people.’ This includes ALL children.”
Why Kids Read
In An American Childhood, Annie Dillard lays bare what it means to read as a child and as an adolescent. It’s not necessarily what adults, particularly parents and teachers, think.
Read MoreIt was clear the adults, including our parents, approved of children who read books, but it was not at all clear why this was so. Our reading was subversive, and we knew it. Did they think we read to improve our vocabularies? Did they want us to read and not pay the least bit of heed to what we read, as they wanted us to go to Sunday school and ignore what we heard?
I was now believing books more than I believed what I saw and heard. I was reading books about the actual, historical, moral world–in which somehow I felt I was not living.
What I sought in books was imagination. It was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage. I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope. I wanted strength, not tea parties. What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived, actually matched the exaltation of the interior life. There you could live.
Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope. There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized. This life could be found and joined, like the Resistance. I kept this exhilarating faith alive in myself, concealed under my uniform shirt like an oblate’s ribbon; I would not be parted from it.
Sarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews