"I will never leave you or let that happen to you"  Nico, our youngest son, said last week,  to one of our baby chicks in his arms, as he and the chick looked on at a wounded chicken. 

      One of our chickens (that's another story) was attacked by an animal that had snuck in the yard.   Kathy, our loving nurse, washed the wounds and prepared a hospital bed of hay in a protected area of the yard.

  Nico, himself,  had been abandoned at 7 months by his

biological parents.  He was left alone in a State facility to be fed by rotating workers, never to form the crucial early bond with a mother.   Often, at night, he pleads with Kathy not to leave him.  On one occasion, holding him as he cried,  I remember feeling some of the dark gloom of abandonment that stills lurks in his memories.

    Next to the chicken coup, where Nico was standing, lay one of his construction projects.  He loves to carry large cement blocks, used for building houses in Mexico, and with wood, rope, egg cartoons and anything else he can find, build things.  He also likes to fight, and play rough.  Yet, this day, while holding a baby chicken in his arms, his heart went out to a bleeding bird, and he consoled her.