A funny thing happen on the way to the forum...

     Well, not on the way to the forum, but actually here on the farm instead!
     Yesterday morning we had the farrier up to shoe and trim the horses' feet, and so I was sitting out watching for a bit.
     Our little one concocted an ingenuous plan to...catch a chicken. As she was cooking up exactly how to do this, I asked her what she was going to do with this chicken when she caught it, and she told me, "Well, we are going to eat if for dinner!."
     She went on to tell me that she would have Dad kill it, and she would pluck and keep all of its feathers!
     Then she spent the next forty-five minutes working on her delicate trap! She had all the baling twine from our hay connected to trees and weeds, and anything she could tie it to. It looked like a giant orange web!
     Then she sprinkled a bunch of chicken feed and even grabbed some water from a puddle (just in case they were thirsty), and waited, albeit not quietly, as she has perfected her official chicken call, which seems to work as about ten chickens came arunning!
     She stood behind the tree with her pull string (this is what she called it), and waited, while sneaking peeks to decided the opportune moment to snag a chicken for supper!
     Finally, the moment was right, BAM! Total chicken chaos! LOL. Those chickens had no idea what was going on; the racket was unbelievable. Sadly, a chicken was not caught.
     Although this simply prompted the tying of more strings, more chicken feed, more ideas. TOO FUNNY.
     In the end, she decided that she wanted a dog carrier to lure a chicken in it. I told her that the carriers were up at the storage unit.
     Then we went to ride the horses, so she seemed to forget about her little adventurous plan.
     I didn't though. Not only did I smile and chuckle a lot, but this reminded me of a fort that my son and two of his friends built on our beach.
     Those three kids spent hours building the perfect fort out of driftwood and vines, and even when the river flooded our beach, that fort stood! It was up for almost three years, and only then it was taken down by a human, not the elements, and that was the summer after we moved away from that house.
     I remember when I first saw that it was down, I was very sad because in my mind that fort symbolized CHILDHOOD.
     Just like the chicken trap! When do we abandon that wonder and awe that we once had when we were little, when we thought that anything was possible?
     When do we start rooting ourselves in the so-called reality of life that tells us what is possible and what isn't? When do our dreams become only dreams?
     I think that the joy of having children is they remind us of all the possibilities life has in store for us!