Category Archives: Animals

Why are you cast down, O my soul?

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And why are you disquieted within me? PS. 43:5a NKJV

A coup attempt and repression in Turkey, mass murder in France on Bastille Day, men in blue assassinated in Dallas, Texas, individual men and women of African-American descent killed or shot by individual officers for what? White privilege acknowledge by some; unacknowledged by most. Two candidates who are despised by many clamor to lead this nation. A nation and a world caught in a spiral of discontent.

I cry out to the LORD, help us please. Fill us with the peace You have promised.

Baby zebra

Baby zebra

Threesome

Threesome

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I look to Your creation, beauty shouts: “I AM here, Gabrielle, in the zebra, the gazelle, the lion, the sunset, the sunrise, waterfalls and the sea. I AM everywhere around you. Open your heart and be still long enough to hear Me. I have not left you. I AM searchable with each breath. Know Me. Trust Me. I AM with you always.”

 

A spring greeting

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from rural West Tenn.

‘That’s no cat’

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vulpes vulpes

While carrying five gallon buckets of water out to the pasture a visitor crossed from the Brahma Sonny’s space, traversed the horses’ wide open area and exited through the pine trees. (With stormy weather predicted the horses, Jack and Bebe, had been moved for the night to a place adjoining the farmhouse.)

Cat

Mel now 10 months old

At first the visitor’s color—yellow with reddish highlights—looked like it could have been Mel’s papa. (As you may recall Mel is one of three kittens rescued with Gray Momma last autumn.)

On second glance the stride was longer, more deliberate and the tail bushy. In fact that bush extended from the hindquarter in a perfect diagonal to the ground.

With all the rodents around the barn the farm is an ideal hunting ground for some critters. And we often have deer, yearlings mostly with flitting tails, grazing in the pasture beside bovines or jumping fences going to and coming from the pond.

At 6:00 a.m. this morning after sighting the stranger I said to myself: “That’s no cat. That’s a fox!”

Early morning on the farm

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Siddhartha–a wanderer of another sort

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Siddhartha and Jack search out grain pellets

Any grain pellets Jack left behind earlier Sid helps him find

and definitely not the Siddhartha of Hermann Hesse

 

Sid, the wanderer, just appeared one day with tail wagging at a gated area beside the house. Asking around, I was not able to find his owner. Sid has the build, the color and the markings of an Australian cattle dog which seems appropriate for our farm.

Friendly and eager to please, he has one annoying habit that could be the reason he ended up fending for himself out in the country. Sid thinks jumping up on people and horses will endear him. To the contrary, this is a habit we have been working to dissuade for the better part of a year.

Jack, the Palomino paint who shares space with the canines when they come out for their constitutional, has taken an interest in Sid and one other canine named Sam. To my surprise Sid will lie on his back in complete surrender or sit perfectly still while Jack sniffs or licks him.

Fed grain directly on the back porch since he tips over his dish, Jack usually misses some pellets before beginning to consume hay. Once Sid hits the back yard his first stop is the porch. Leaving the hay Jack returns alongside his pal to find a few more morsels.