Getting Stuck

Have you ever had the feeling like you were stuck and you couldn’t move forward?  Well, have I got a story for you!  Sometimes you get to doing life, and you think, “I’m making some really good choices right now.”  And then the universe sends you a reminder that “no, you need a curveball right about now.”

We were raising some baby chicks that we had purchased from our favorite hatchery, Murray McMurray.  We usually don’t buy exotic breeds, but still, it costs money to be selective if you only want females, etc.  And these baby chicks were about 3 weeks old.  They were getting pretty curious about the world around them.  We were using an oval galvanized steel stock tank (horse water trough to those of you who know) to keep them in while they were still so tiny.  We had other full-grown chickens that we were segregating them from while they were young and vulnerable.  And so, we placed the water trough in our storm shelter/basement which is connected to our house.  Easy access and convenient to check on them, regulate the temperature, light, food, all the things babies need.

The basement is also used for storage of shelf stable foods, our upright freezer, things we need but not every day.  And despite our best efforts, things like spiders, centipedes, other bugs I don’t know the names of…love to live down in our basement.  And when I say despite our best efforts, I’m talking about extra thick seals around the door, caulking around any obvious cracks, anything we could do to try and keep the bugs on the other side of the door.  Alas, we were not winning that war.  So, we had some strategically placed sticky pads to try and trap bugs.

Now you gotta be careful where you put those sticky pads.  Typically, you want to put them in places that you don’t frequent.  Inevitably you forget where those strategic locations are, and oh no….you just dropped the cap of a bottle that is now rolling under the food rack, and when you try to grab it…ugh.  You touched the sticky pad.  Which has all kinds of bugs stuck to it too.  You get the point.  It seems like a necessary evil.  But still evil.

As I mentioned, the baby chicks were getting restless in their container.  Some of them seemed to have more developed wings than others.  And the really eager ones were learning to jump pretty high.  Or stand on top of their water feeder and try to jump out.  Periodically I would find one roaming around down there, happy to have freedom and investigating the basement.  Unaware of his infraction.

I was working from home during those days and my office was upstairs.  One day I could hear some particularly loud peeping coming from the basement.  The kinds that says “save me.”  I quickly went down to investigate, and I could hear that there was a chick somewhere out of bounds.  But where was that sound coming from exactly?   I couldn’t believe where I found him.  Yes.  He was under something, stuck to one of those sticky pads!  What were the odds?  I mean in a room the size of about 220 square feet, a chick the size of a wad of paper was able to find the very spot 4.5”x3” that he should not walk.  And he was super stuck to that thing.  I mean, his entire body was now one with the sticky pad.  But his beak was still able to open and close and say “HELP!” really loud.

Now don’t hate me for thinking this, but my immediate thought was to just put that thing out of his misery.  Right away.  But my friend was over at our house, and I called out for her to come and look at what had happened.  Lindsey took one look at that poor little thing and said, “I think we can get him off that pad.”  I said “no way.  There’s no way this baby chick will ever be free of this sticky pad.”  Lindsey told me to get some oil and she would start working to save it.  Well, at first, we poured too much oil on the whole thing: pad, baby chick…oil was everywhere.  Like we were baptizing it.  And when you tried to work the oil against the feathers, your nails would get stuck a little with each attempt. 

I said out loud “I’m just going to kill it.  To get it over with so it doesn’t continue to suffer.”  But Lindsey was such a trooper.  She wanted to just keep working at it.  In that moment, I was so thankful for her resolve.  Because mine had crumbled.  And believe it or not, in about 20 minutes the baby chick was freed from the pad.  It had, no doubt, drunk a bunch of oil.  And was totally wet and exhausted.  But it was freed and alive.  I got the distinct impression that baby chick just knew that we were trying to save it.  The whole time we were working on it I could see its little eye looking intensely up at us.  Willing us to succeed.

We dried it off as best we could.  I mean, oil doesn’t really dry up very easily.  I was drained from the stress of the whole ordeal.  Lindsey just carried on doing what she had been doing before the emergency, like it was no sweat off her back.  And in the immediate aftermath I actually had this tangible thought: “I’m so glad that God does not give up on us.  Just like Lindsey didn’t give up on that stuck chick.”  Regardless of what the situation looks like to us.  No matter how dire.  God knows how to get us unstuck.  He knows how to save us when we get ourselves into super sticky situations.  And when we cry out “HELP!” He hears us.  And works tirelessly for us.

We started calling that baby chick by the nickname “Oily.”  And would you believe that after about a week and a half, I couldn’t even tell you which one Oily was.  No remnants of his ordeal remained.  Good as new.