The Hunt
At night, we hear mosquitos whining in the air. We don’t see them in the darkness but we know
they are present. Like a prison camp
search light sweeping the walls, our cell phone light seeks out whom to
destroy. The little pests are hard to
see though. Daktari and Man Cub have an
electric tennis racket that they hunt with at night to zap the mosquitos in the
house. It’s a fun game while we are
awake. When we are asleep however, we
are under mosquito nets, imagining it to be a force field holding them at
bay. Who is hunting whom really?
In the morning, choir practice of song birds begins quite
early. I love their gentle early morning
blessing that sings to us “Get up, get up, the sun is about to rise and it will
be a hot and very busy day. Get up while
it is lovely and peaceful with us!” We
can’t see the birds too easily from our ground level apartment with one
window. But I do know they are
there. There is a 10 lb. book of The
Birds of East Africa that I’ve been toting around for years now. It shows me what they look like on
paper. Yet experience shows a real bird
in in the tree is worth 25 in the book!
The illustrations of a Lilac Breasted Roller pale in comparison to the real
life one. A Variable Sunbird far
surpasses its species name and drawing in the astonishing beauty of
reality. I renamed it the “Birthday Bird”
because of its birthday party like colors and date of apparition.
We stay on the lookout, ready for the beautiful surprise
that is the True Life version: iridescent flash of fruit loop blue as the wings
take to flight. The birds are there but
my eyes can’t quite find them in the dim light of dawn…
Last weekend we got to go camping at Lake Naivasha with our
Tenwek friends to recreate and relax together and celebrate the birthdays of a
few of our Man-Cubs together. There were
not one but TWO Lilac Breasted Rollers perched in some dead trees at the
shore! I had one in my binoculars and
lost the other. Where did he go? Then, the flash of wings was right beside me
where he had landed and taken off again.
Blue and purple and white flash, opening my eyes to what was right there
beside me as I looked out in the distant dead tree. So close
There is an old Rabbinical joke George once told us about a
day that God wanted to play a game of hide and seek and He wondered where to
hide and the Holy Spirit told God to hide in the human heart because “no one
will ever look for you there”!
Who is hunting whom?
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