Morning Stillness

I always read a daily devotion before I go to bed at night.  Last night's entry started with a simple request: Meet Me in the morning stillness. I rarely get up early on Saturday morning...mostly out of consideration to my husband.  Saturday is the only day that he gets to sleep late; so even if I am awake, I usually just lay in bed.  This morning, I decided to take my chances and quietly slip out.  I picked up my devotional book, the May issue of Oprah magazine, and Lara Spencer's book I Brake for Yard Sales, and I headed out to the backyard patio.

The chairs on the patio were covered in dew, so I decided to move to the front porch.  I prefer to sit on the patio, because I have full view of the garden and all the trees that outline our backyard for privacy.  When I sit on the front porch, I face the highway and the neighbors across the street.  Still, the beautiful morning beckoned me for a meeting.

Just before I sat down, I noticed the leaves on the large caladium looked dry.  I had forgotten to water the plant all week, so I laid down my magazine and books and fetched my watering can.  That's when I found the dead lizard in the bottom of the dry pail, and of course, I gave him a story.  I imagined that, at some point during the week, he fell into the bottom of the watering can and could not get out.  I thought about him tirelessly trying to escape by climbing up the sides of  the slick surface, and then sliding back down to the bottom. I assumed that he starved to death as he dealt with his hopeless situation.

Then I began to blame myself for his death. I had been so busy all week!  If I had just watered the caladium earlier in the week, he might have lived! Plus, he wasn't the first lizard to die this week.  Somehow, one had crawled into my utility room and underneath a small load of clothes that needed washing.  I stepped on him by accident, and he died; however, I mused, he died quickly.  The little lizard in the watering can endured such a slow, desperate death.

So...I disposed of the second dead lizard. I filled the watering can and watered the caladium. I retrieved my reading materials and finally sat down on the front porch.  Meet Me in the morning stillness was just lost on that little lizard. My mind was anything but still. I don't know why, but I can not bear hopeless situations like the lizard's.  At night, these little hard-shelled beetle bugs are drawn to our nightlight.  In the morning, I always find one or two turned-up on its back side.  Their little legs will be wiggling like crazy, but there is no way they are turning right-side up without my intervention.  One by one, I turn them over and they crawl in the grass.

Last weekend, I witnessed a similar situation. The semi-feral community cat came to our shed looking for food.  When we see her, we always feed her because she is usually pregnant; however, that Sunday morning, she was already having breakfast.  The momma bird that was nesting in our shed was teaching her babies to fly, and the cat had intercepted one of their attempts.  Two of the baby birds were still alive, and the mother bird was going crazy.  She would actually fly down and land just inches away from the cat, in order to distract her away from the baby birds.  My husband, dressed in his Sunday finest, scatted the cat away from the shed and chased her into the bushes. We watched as the mother bird frantically taught her two baby birds to fly that morning.  By the afternoon, when the cat returned, all the birds were gone.  The momma bird knew that she had to get her babies out of that place or they would die.

Meet Me in the morning stillness...then I remembered over a month ago, I heard a frenzied chirping near the wood line of our backyard.  My little dog was barking, so I walked over to check out the commotion.  A large snake was swallowing a small squirrel, and part of the squirrel's tale was protruding from his mouth.  I ran into the house and grabbed my camera; then I hurried back to take pictures of the huge snake. By the time I returned, the snake had digested the squirrel and was crawling back to its den underneath a pile of cinder blocks. I showed the picture of the snake and its crawl space to my husband and one of our neighbors.

The following Friday, I came home from a late afternoon shopping trip.  The neighbor had brought his tractor to our house and was in the process of pushing up the pile of cinder blocks.  My husband was already home from work, so I asked him what was happening.  He said that the neighbor was covering the snake's den...burying the snake alive.  He added that the snake may be feeding baby snakes, and by covering the snake hole, the snake would not be able to crawl out. The snake or snakes inside would smother or starve to death.  I screamed, "Are you crazy?"   He replied, "I am not the one with the tractor!"

I thought about that snake all night long.  Even though the snake had eaten the little squirrel, I never wanted to bury it alive inside its den.  Yesterday afternoon, my husband found a long snake skin about twenty feet away from the cinder blocks.  He assured me that the skin belonged to the snake I saw, and that somehow the snake had found its way out of the heaped pile of rubble.

Too much to think about too early in the morning...Meet Me in the morning stillness.  Morning stillness is best served with mind stillness, which does not exist in my chaotic world of critter chatter! One simple request, and I missed the meeting.  Two hours had passed, and I smelled coffee. My husband met me on the front porch and asked, " Mind if I join you?"  

Hmmm...

Dianne : )