Leftovers

There are casualties in the aftermath of any storm,

not always the ones we think of first, and yet they are

precious, living beings.

I frequent a beautiful park during the week that, like so many other places,

suffered a lot of tree and natural habitat damage during Hurricane Matthew.

As I have been visiting over the past two weeks following the storm, I have seen

more young birds than ever before.  They are flitting about in the barren branches

and hopping across the ground in search of food, perhaps lost nests, and are

allowing  me closer than ever I imagined.

They are leftovers, some without homes and perhaps even parents any longer.  I don’t like to think of which of my little friends may not have survived.  Even the Ibis seem confused, less aggressive in their begging for tidbits.  Most people I know were so very lucky to have suffered “only” superficial damage in their areas, mostly to the trees and bushes.

But…

that doesn’t mean that homes were not lost and families not destroyed, just perhaps not the ones we imagined.  God’s creatures will survive, thrive and rebuild.  But we need to think of them when we say careless things about the “damned trees” in the neighborhood that have dropped their broken limbs across our yards and shed their mosses in clusters like hairy gray snowdrifts.  Our debris is Nature’s demise.  I wish I had taken my camera every day because there were so many others on different days, some I had never even seen out in the open.  But now they have no choice as they make their way in a new world.  Try to love all of Nature’s living things. Here are a few more of my little friends..

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I don’t worry for the Blue Jay.  Those little ones are tough.  Seems to be born into them.  Storm is just another word for change to Mother Nature’s children.  And they are quite adaptable! We can always take a lesson from them.

How do you handle change? With grace or hysteria? Both?

To every thing there is a season

and a time to every purpose under Heaven…..