My granddaughter Elena has never met an animal she doesn't like. Horses, cats, dogs, exotic animals, birds, chickens, you name it. When she went to Peru and Columbia, she choses not to partake of cooked guinea pigs.
She told her dad recently, "Chickens are my spirit animals."
Last week, one of her chickens laid eggs. This morning, Will sent me a text showing that she is naming the eggs already!
She is amazed that she can hold each egg up to the light and (candling) and see the unhatched chicks inside.
When she was about two, I noticed that whenever she heard a bird, she would imitate its sound with such accuracy that the bird would answer her! I said, "Did you hear that, Elena? The bird thinks you're a bird!" A new inhabitant in this world, she wasn't particularly impressed with her own skill at bird singing. She looked at me like, "Can't everybody do that?"
Every Easter, Papi gives her a dozen chicks. Most don't make it until the next Easter. But this year, she and her dad made a safe house for chickens and every one has a name--just like every bird in every chicken batch all her life. The mama of this particular brood is named Ghost.
When she and Nathan came on Thursday, she noticed feathers in my antique red scale. She picked them all up and identified them. The big one she said was probably "either a hawk or an owl feather." It hadn't even occurred to me to wonder what bird each feather had been attached to!
I pick them up on my walks just because they are pretty.
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| Light as three feathers |
I guess my spirit animal is a fluffy little dog named Luci. But my spirit girl is a ten-year-old artist/scientist/observer named Elena!
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