The Effects of Doubt

I don't doubt. I never have. I have always seen the fun in making things happen. Even seemingly impossible things do not thwart me. I fully enjoy the challenge of asking, scheming, seeing the problem through, working towards it as if it were going to happen etc. Sure, not everything comes to pass, but the important stuff always does and the rest is still unfolding as I continue to breathe in and out, in and out. Hey, it ain't over 'till it's over, and its far from over from where I sit now. I am thoroughly annoyed by the pessimist. I have teenagers (with dreams) who use pessimism as a means to avoid disappointment. It drives me crazy to witness their self limiting pessimism. They fear not achieving the goal more that they want to reach out and grab it. I am trying to teach them to use my technique, but its hard to turn fearful people into optimists. Still, I have an excellent track record and it's hard to say that it all came from chance. My daughter Kiran is much like me. She manifests. In another blog I chronicled her manifestation of a female orange tabby named Clarissa, whom she requested from the universe for her sixth birthday. Clarissa, born under a house in Pacific Palisades in March, was delivered to Kieran one week before her sixth birthday, exactly as she had requested. Kieran is patient. She makes her request, draws pictures, makes lists with her object of desire depicted in a requesting format, like an order. She did this many months ago in the form of a request for a baby chick. She asked me, "Mom, can I have a chick?". "Absolutely not!", I said. "We do not live on a farm, we don't have room for chickens". This request and dialogue was made more than once. I even went so far as to add, "You may have as many chickens as you want on your very own farm, when you are a grown up. But not here and not now."

Guess what I have in my back yard in a bunny hutch right now. One guess. Go on. Say it. You know what I am going to say, so just spit it out. Yes, you are correct. I have a chick. No Kieran has a chick, rapidly developing into a chicken. Her name is Henny. The way she came to be was so sly, so underhanded that the universe literally got my husband Tom and I to go out of our way to secure her. I am sure someone is giggling somewhere right now at our predicament.

It started with a windy evening and a walk around the block. Tom and the kids came across a baby bird, who appeared to be dead, in the middle of the sidewalk. Tom picked the bird up, and noticed that it was warm and still breathing. He thought that a safe warm box would be a better place for this creature to die than out in the open as food for a predator. He brought the bird home to me. It had small wings and was covered in feathers but was only the size of a walnut. Kieran named the bird Patch while I force fed it gruel through an eye dropper. We tucked it into a box with a warmer and I got up with it twice during the night to feed it drips of wet cat food in warm water. It survived the night and the next day I suggested that we return it to its nest. Tom didn't think that was a good idea, since the nest wasn't locatable. We kept dripping food into the crack of it's beak, though it never opened up like a baby bird should to allow a full dropper of food in. I was literally force-feeding it. It had long legs for a chick and started hopping out of its box. It even ran away and was lost from me, but found by my oldest child, Cadence. During the second night, it occurred to me that Patch was a quail. Like chickens, quails are born ready to peck for themselves and are ground nesters. There would be no way of returning Patch to his nest. On the third day, I knew I needed to get Patch to peck for himself, but didn't know how to do this. You know the saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink", it was a lot like that. Patch just stood there, cheeping, not pecking. I was getting desperate. I couldn't let this quail chick die. I called around, looked on line, receiving this advice: I needed to get a chick to teach Patch how to peck and drink. There was no time to waste, the kids and I were off to the feed store. We were set up with a warming lamp, chick feed, food and water containers, a bale of wood shavings and a tiny chick for Patch. Kieran named the chick Hatch. Hatch successfully taught Patch to eat. We all saw this, the two of them pecking at the food trough, Patch happily nuzzling Hatch, trying to nest under her fluffy body. We were so happy. We thought we had saved the quail. We never saw Patch drink though. I tried to show him how, like they taught me at the feed store, by dipping his beak in the water. He wouldn't let me dip his tiny beak, he never learned the lesson. By evening, when we were celebrating our success, Patch was growing lethargic, almost drunk in the warmth of the heating lamp. In the morning, we found his still body, nuzzled under a warm blanket, peaceful and gone. We all cried. I buried him in a special place in the garden.

We were left with a single tiny chick, Hatch. We tried to return Hatch to the feed store, but they had a policy that prevented such action. They said they had another customer attempt to return a chick that morning, one she had purchased for her brooding hen, but whom the hen had rejected and tried to kill. This chick needed a home, and we could rescue her and provide company for our lonely Hatch. It all happened so quickly. I only had time to marvel at the irony of it a few times an hour, as we introduced Henny, the new chick to Hatch, who was substantially smaller. The term "pecking order" became clear to me as these two chicks came together. I wouldn't say that Henny "killed" Hatch, only that by the end of the next day, Hatch was dead too and I dug anther small grave next to Patch's.

Tom and I decided to draw the line and not try and add any more chicks to our crazy predicament. The days turned into weeks and our little Henny bonded with us, but especially Kieran, and is now a young, very people-friendly hen. Again, I suspect that somewhere in the universe, someone is chuckling. I have instructed Kieran to not ask for any more animals for awhile, or to add the caveat, "when I am much older" when making her requests to the universe. She is a powerful manifester and this I respect greatly. I would rather combat issues of abundance any day. The effects of doubt are much less fun to deal with (or NOT deal with).