Today should have been the day. The numbers add up, calculated ever so carefully, except for one small detail. Well, fifteen small details to be precise.
The story line is simple. Mid-winter, my pheasant hens decide to lay. Not a common thing for an undometicated bird to do. After collecting fifteen eggs, one of my Salmon Faverolles decided to go broody, so I took advantage of her mothering heart, and offered her the pheasant eggs. She accepted them with astonishing earnestness, rolling them one by one under her plumage.
She hasn't moved from her basket, not even to lean forward and drink the water placed in front or to eat a morsel. She hasn't stood up, stretched or given any opportunity for these much smaller eggs to cool off.
After two weeks, she started her quiet mothering croon to the littles lives stirring in their armoured womb. She has zealously guarded them, loved them, spoken endearingly to them and claimed them as her own.
I confess that this sacrificial love has made me feel unworthy and inept in my very feeble attempts to show love and care to others. I confess that I am altogether willing to count the hardships of endurance, to shed tears when the sacrifice has been so great.
Today, Sienna would have heard little pips, had these eggs been her own, but they are not. They are pheasant eggs, which means she has at least two more days before a little pheasant chick unearths itself from underneath this feathered act of love and greets this darling of a mother.
Patience, endurance, long-suffering, These qualities are within my grasp and yet I hastily grab at impatience. Impatience that says 'I didn't plan on this. I need resolution. I want results.'
Leave it to a lovely little hen to teach the simplicity of waiting in silence.
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