Charcoal on the outside

Undergraduate studies. Roasting a pig over a pit. I've heard it both ways.

My allotted time has come and gone. But I'm still over the fire. I am well done through and through. They keep the skewer in my body. The heat cooks my soul away.

They mush prefer ash and charcoal.

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Araruana x Macao

I*m watching the students file in and sit in their seats. The buzz of teenage voices fills the room but one voice rises above the others with ease.

His attention is arrested on me. His white whiskery face pools with an excited blush. This jail-bait male practically dances and prances in his seat. The students in the room laugh and give their full attention to his useless antics.

I can feel his eyes intent on my face; watching my every move. Anytime I happen to glance his way; he puffs up and shows off his colors. I chuckle and shake my head at his naivete. Even if he were in date-able age range for me; he definitely isn*t my type. Positioning himself on the table in front of me; he bobs his head up and down repeatedly.

*Hello!* His voice grates on my eardrums.

*Hello. How are you?* I ask with exaggerated enthusiasm. Instead of replying; he looks at me from the side; *making eyes* at me. I can*t help but laugh out loud. He joins me and drags it out past the point of humor. He holds his leg out towards me invitingly. Oh no. I*m not so easily fooled! I*ve been in this situation before and I got hurt.

That beak was NOT something to be trifled with. But for some odd reason this 6 year old male has chosen me out of all the females in the room to flirt with. He flaps his wings and sharpens his beak; pulling out all of his best moves apparently. I relent and allow him to sit on my arm next to my body. Peikia dances and sings to me. He rubs his face on my shoulder; a sign of true affection coming from a macaw. The worst flirtatious gesture he pulls out is his regurgitating-loogie-to-show-you-that-I-am-a-good-provider trick. Not yummy.

Of course my kind act led to pain. His beak; with 350 pounds of pressure; was angrily taking his woes of unrequited love out on my unprotected body. This had happened before. Biting isn*t a very nice thing to do to someone; but a 6 year-old Catalina macaw doesn*t care about a common courtesy such as that.

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Animal symphony

My eyes open unwillingly. It is still dark. My brain is alert instantly. What is going on? My body remains in its exact position. No need to move. Since it's still dark, just go back to sleep. Shut again, my eyes try to pull the brain back to blessed sleep. No, that would be too easy. My brain runs its gears and stumbles through pointless thought. Why am I awake? The rest of my body grumbles and tells the control center not to worry about it. This is silly. It doesn't matter. 

Oh the curse of being a light sleeper. Really anything can wake me out of deep slumber, even rolling myself over in bed. So it is detrimental to try to figure out what is keeping me from going back to sleep. Because then I won't be able to forget it. That would be all that my tired brain would be able to think about. Blast. There it is again. Cock a doodle doo! So that's what's keeping me up. That tiny little fluff ball we call a rooster. It has to be like 4:30 in the a.m. What is this crazy male chicken thinking? Cock a doodle doo! The sun isn't even close to being up. We've got in the least a couple of hours. 

Maybe he'll come to his senses and stop soon. Cock a doodle doo! Nope. Of course he has to greet the blatantly missing sun every 20 seconds. Makes perfect sense. Cock a doodle doo! Ugh! I stuff my fingers in my ears and wait for sleep to help me relax. In which case I'll drop my hands and be awakened once again by the obnoxious rooster. 

An hour later I am cognizant again. Cock a doodle doo! Stupid, &*#%@# rooster!!! I'm pretty sure that murdering this hormonal birdbrain would make me very happy. I doubt that I would feel any regret in my decision... Cock a doodle doo! Dad is still in bed and he might think that he just got out and ran away from his little flock of adoring hens... Maybe not. Cock a doodle doo! Knives and a headless rooster were starting to seem like a really good idea.

Ruff! No. Way. Ruff! Ruff! If the neighbor's dog really thinks that he is going to get away with a misdemeanor like this...he is VERY wrong. Cock a doodle doo! Ruff! Ruff! I love nature. But not at 5:30 in the morning when I should be slumbering. In the day time I probably wouldn't even notice either of these sounds but because everything else is quiet and still, these sounds are amplified ten times over. Cock a doodle doo! What have I done to deserve this?! Ruff! Ruff!

It would seem that this one little feathered creature was waking all of the surrounding animals. The neighbor's horses began to nicker and paw at the ground. Minuscule sounds made huge in my overactive brain. 

Cock a doodle doo! Ruff! Nicker! Ruff! Pawwww! Ca Kaw!! That's it!!! With magpies, I draw the line! I'm getting a shotgun out of my dad's gun case. This war WILL end in  my favor. I sit upright with fury boiling my blood and fueling my weary body. 

Sudden silence. Was this a dream? Could it be they were waiting to torture me once I tried to close my eyes again? Hesitantly I lay my head on my pillow. Will this seeming silence last? Unused adrenaline still laces my veins... I close my eyes unwittingly, knowing that in just a short amount of time... I will be awakened again. But hunting is more than agreeable to me if these hooligans started their untimely singing again...

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Chicken eggs

Did the chicken come first? Or was it an egg? Pointless really. Did the chick in the egg want to come out? Now that is a question worth asking...

All of us in some way or the other like stability and structure. Individually we all like different amounts of those in our lives. Every living creature comes into this world from a place of warmth, comfort, and security. Whether it's the womb or an eggshell, there is always stability and structure. There is no threat of fear or hurt or pain. Do we want to come out, really? Of course we none of us have a choice when it comes to birth. Biological processes will be carried out whether or not we have a choice in the matter. But if we had the power to manipulate parturition...would we come out?

 The egg is well structured. The chick is provided with a strong, protective barrier between itself and the world.  But that chick doesn't have to push its way completely out of the shell that shelters it. It has to make the decision to exert itself to get out, to put forth the effort to push past that strong shell. Why does this fluffy, frail little creature come out of its eternally safe place? Why flirt with the dangers of living?  But we all make that decision. To come from a world of peace, love and light, to live in a broken, hungry world seems condemning. 

We do it because we can only gain eternal life through earth life first. Every stumbling step, every adolescent pimple, every struggling year at college somehow brings us a step closer to our Heavenly Father's side.

I can't remember making such a decision. The Lord put a veil over my mind so that I would make my earth life decisions purely based on my faith and the whisperings of the Spirit. But somehow I feel the weight of the decision every day of my life. As I struggle through small and large trials or even just keeping up with the demands on my time as a busy college student, I recall a little portion of making that decision. Thankfully I've been given a Way. The biggest decision I have to make now, is to give my trust to the One who will lead me on it.

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