Great Tailed Grackle

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.  George Washington Carver

Have you ever watched a grackle?  These are what I call bully birds.  When they find food they puff up their wings and make obnoxious sounds to keep smaller birds away from the food source.  So ultimately they hog the food. 

Last night I was in the house and I heard a bunch of grackles and they were making an awful noise.  They were all squawking at the same time and were getting louder and louder.  I went out to the patio to investigate.  It was a grackle murder.  My dog was out in the back yard and I guess the grackles were squawking at him and he got tired of it.  My dog is a hunter by nature and I am thinking the grackles were thinking this dog is too old to hunt.  He’s too slow.  That was their first mistake, thinking he was slow.  When I walk out onto the patio there are several grackles squawking at him.  At first I couldn’t see my dog because he was behind the storage building in our back yard.  One grackle was on the ground all puffed up and the other was at the top of the fence.  I call out to my dog and he comes strolling around the corner with a grackle in his mouth. 

I ran over to him and told him to drop it.  He did, but it was too late.  The deed had been done. I had to promise him a treat to get him away from the bird. I know, I was reinforcing his murderous behavior but there was no way I would get the bird away from him otherwise so I resorted to bribery.

I like most animals and critters, except snakes, spiders and ants and maybe a few others I can’t think of right now, but I find it amazing how God created the order of things on earth. 

My brother-in-law and I were talking recently and we were discussing how nature is God’s creation and how just watching nature can show you a picture of God. The grackles might fight each other for food but when it came time to protect one of their own, they didn’t hesitate to try to scare my dog away to save another grackle.  Just as God created that nature in a grackle, so he created the same in us and the protection of our families. 

As I get older I spend more time thinking about God and His creation.  We were not created by mistake.  We are part of a great plan and God didn’t create us on a whim.  If you start to look at everything in life from God’s perspective, you will be amazed at what you see and learn.  God intends for us to gain wisdom by the things around us. If we are too busy to slow down and see those things around us that we can learn from, wisdom will elude us.     

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, the very nature that surrounds me was created by You.  If I listen carefully and observe that very nature You created, wisdom can be found.  Help me to slow down in my busy life and observe Your Creation.  What an awesome God You are and I praise You for creating this amazing earth where wisdom can be found in the smallest things.                            

Scripture: Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.  Genesis 1:26-31