A Mother's Love

In addition to having fresh food and enjoying a pastoral life, having farm animals allows you the opportunity to constantly see up close, the circle of life.  From birth to death, cradle to grave.  Every day is a parable, a teachable moment.  You see the joy (and pain) of birth.  You see the sadness and sometimes brutality of death.  You see the gentleness of a mother to her offspring.  Even in a first-time mother, instincts take over.  This occurs not only in farm animals, but others as well.

Yesterday afternoon I witnessed an event that was a day too late, but despite their motherly instincts, wild, uncivilized animals don't celebrate Mother's Day.  I've recently set up the portable electric fencing in our 3 acre pasture.  Each day I rotate the cows and goats into another paddock for grazing.  I'll probably post about it more once the grass really comes in strong.

Anyway, as I was walking toward the western perimeter fencing, I became aware of a bird on the ground trying to catch my attention.  Was it hurt?  Then I heard its cry and saw that it was a Killdeer.  A killdeer has long legs, a shrill cry, and runs around on the ground.  They bird was trying to lead me toward the east. 

You can see the killdeer in the center right of the photo running away from me (pardon the poor quality of the photo)

The bird began to drag its wing like it was injured.  It stopped and looked back at me to be sure I was following and then resumed its frantic display.  As much as I tried to keep up with her, she kept running.

Of course I knew the game she was playing.  She was leading me AWAY from something - her nest.  It became a challenge for me to find it.  I simply walked the opposite way that she was leading me and walked around looking on the ground.  Killdeer build their "nests" directly on the ground.  Despite being camouflaged, I was able to find it after a bit of time.  The four eggs were hidden in plain sight!

I looked at the eggs for a moment as the killdeer emphatically tried to get me to leave.  I'm sure she thought I was going to harm her eggs, but of course, I did not.  I quickly walked away, leaving the mother to protect her young.  This little bird will lay her eggs and raise her young, risking her life to save them until they are ready to leave the nest and raise families of their own.  This killdeer's instinct invokes her to run, cry, employ an act of dragging a wing so that a predator would think it was an easy meal - all the while leading away the one would would harm her unborn bird (a clump of yolk and albumin at this point).  Amazing!

If God instilled this self-sacrificing, protective, motherly instinct into a small, dumb bird, how does a highly developed, civilized and functioning human abandon the instinct to nurture, protect, and care for her own flesh and blood?  As I walked back across the pasture in the coolness of the evening, I realized that although we're at the top of the food chain, we can still learn some things from animals.  (I say some things, because some animals EAT their young.)  Only one day after Mother's Day, in the incident I witnessed in the pasture, the killdeer showed me a beautiful illustration of a mother's love.