One morning, our observant daughter noticed a hawk flying back and forth in the sky above our property. \u00a0In the afternoon, she spotted it again. \u00a0This time, it was circling high in the sky above our chicken coop. \u00a0It seemed to be eyeing our several free-range chickens which were happily pecking around the pasture totally oblivious of the danger we knew was above. \u00a0The chickens, raised by our children since they were one day old, were not yet full-grown. \u00a0To our children, the chickens were dear friends, but, to the hawk, they were a tasty lunch. \u00a0Since we hadn\u2019t lost any of our free-range chickens to hawks in broad daylight, we went about our day. \u00a0As the time for evening chores approached, it grew very windy and chilly. \u00a0Our children decided to do chores a bit early as the clouds were growing darker. \u00a0 A\u00a0heavy rainstorm was in the forecast for early evening. \u00a0Moments later, I looked out our kitchen window to see my older daughter running toward the house. \u00a0Our daughter had counted and recounted the chickens resting on their perches inside the coop. \u00a0She kept coming up two short. \u00a0Usually, as dusk approaches, chickens will return from the pastures on their own to the safety of their coop for the night. \u00a0So, where were those other two? \u00a0As I pulled on my barn boots to help in a search, my teary-eyed daughter\u00a0guessed\u00a0the\u00a0likely reason for our missing chickens. \u00a0“The hawk,” she remembered.\u00a0\u00a0We eventually called off the search as the rain started to come down hard, soaking us. \u00a0My daughter was quiet in deep thought the rest of the night. \u00a0Surprisingly, there were no dramatic outbursts over the lost chickens that evening. \u00a0As I tucked her in bed, her spirit seemed even a little cheerful, \u201cMom, I\u2019m pretty sure that hawk got my chickens. \u00a0I\u2019m very sad for them, but I can be glad that the hawk is now happy with\u00a0a full tummy.\u201d \u00a0Wow. \u00a0That\u2019s a very \u201cthe glass is half-full\u201d thing to say. \u00a0And I guess she was paying attention to Mufasa\u2019s circle of life lecture to Simba in The Lion King. \u00a0Early the next morning, the chickens were found hunkered down in a corner of the pasture. \u00a0The poor things had probably just been disoriented by the sudden change in weather. \u00a0My daughter was very happy to locate her lost chickens, but her smile wasn\u2019t as big as I expected. \u00a0She expressed her mixed emotions,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m so happy our chickens are okay, but now I\u2019m a bit sad the hawk is out there still hungry.\u201d \u00a0We both looked up at the clear blue sky but the hungry hawk was nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One morning, our observant daughter noticed a hawk flying back and forth in the sky above our property. \u00a0In the afternoon, she spotted it again. \u00a0This time, it was circling high in the sky above our chicken coop. \u00a0It seemed to be eyeing our several free-range chickens which were happily pecking around the pasture totally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":913,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}