If you need to smile...

...a friend of mine has parents in Belize doing a mission...the following was written by he/his parents.

"When we last left our intrepid heroes (read: my parents) they had arrived in Belize and are enjoying it very much. My mother told tale of a neighborhood rooster that she has dubbed 'Rooster Rogers'

Now, my father seems to have made some special friends, among them, Rogers himself. What follows was written by my mother. And I can't be more proud of her for referencing both Hitchcock and Wes Craven.

"I have to tell you there are more chickens in Benque Viejo than people! Our first day here we found it endearing to watch Rogers steer his little flock, or herd, or pod, or covey, or gaggle, (what do you call a bunch of chickens!) around the yard. So day two, Chuckie pitches out hunks of stale-bread from the veranda (stale bread is a pretty common occurrence here). Rogers and the ladies think they have died and gone to heaven. Day three is a delightful repeat. Day four Roger’s group has grown from six to ten or eleven and they are now Pavlov chicks who start running for our house when they hear our front door open. Chickens running are a sight to behold. Wish I could have captured that! They are all ecstatic, but a few chicken-fights (did you know there really was such a thing?) break out on the periphery. Chuck has not gone to work yet so this continues to be the high-light of his day. He would also like to keep his feeding practices secret since he doesn’t know if the chicken owners want them eating stale bread. Day five there is a sea of chickens already waiting for him when he goes out. They are making a hellacious racket and they are all looking up at him (I don’t think chickens can blink) and swaying in unison from left to right. Chuck is scared because he doesn’t think he has enough bread. Bring rice he hollers into the house. I tell him raw rice is really bad for birds! He yells “cook it”! At this point intervention is necessary. I go out on the veranda and explain how out-of-hand this has gotten. It has to stop. He agrees, after all who is the adult here, the chickens or Chuck? So it’s been a week now and the chickens have all dissipated. They all seem to have forgotten the good-old, free-lunch era. All except Rogers. He looks up here all the time, unblinking, and I have noticed that he is edging closer and closer to my veranda when he starts practicing his 2:00 a.m. crowing. He doesn’t realize just how close Thanksgiving is!!

So now Chuckie is focusing his attention on a small, dainty yellow-breasted bird. There are a lot of them and fun to watch. They fly really fast and zip in and out grabbing bugs from the air. They will land close to us, but they are really skittish. Chuckie, of course, thinks they are hungry. So he makes a pile of crumbs on our veranda rail and sits quietly, hoping they will come and eat. Well we also have tons of black-birds. Not as big as the ones at home, but big enough. Chuckie does not like the black birds and is not willing to feed them anything because they are loud and aggressive spawns-of-the-devil. So now we have stare-downs between Chuckie and the black birds.(They don’t blink either). However, when Chuckie is sitting so quietly, not moving so he doesn’t scare his yellow birds, he often falls asleep. Then the black birds swoop in a eat all the crumbs. There is a Hitchcock movie here somewhere!!

Our prayers are with you all at Thanksgiving. We have never been away from family during any holiday so we are already feeling lonely. We are helping Robinson’s host 100 people for dinner at their house and grounds. There will be tents erected and chairs and tables on the lawn. The church takes this opportunity to say “thanks” to all the volunteers with a chicken dinner and all the trimmings. I will help our two nuns cook 30 chickens (we are using the high school home ec kitchen with 6 stoves). Turkey is a luxury here…too expensive to serve. Everyone will bring a dish to share, I’m bringing roasted rooster. There is something unnerving about picturing100 people walking across the lawn carrying pot-luck casseroles. A little Wes Craven-ish…

The nuns are really nice, but usually don’t get my jokes. I often catch them looking at me a little strangely. They need to realize that I have already been saved, I just need to be appreciated."

**Made me chuckle, and even laugh out loud! Hope you all enjoy Thanksgiving!