I actually share my compound with chickens and rabbits. Most times I like to sit back and watch the way they relate with themselves.
The chickens are a funny race, especially the females. One minute they are so fearful, but once they have chicks, they grow so wild and violent, almost like they are always high on something.
The rabbits are one of the most peaceful, quiet and gentle specie of the rat family. And they are quite good looking too. They are so gentle; they don’t even bother to get violent when you try to touch their young ones.
Going with the above description of the two set of animals I live with, you can imagine the war, the massacre and the carnage that happens once the female chickens have chicks with them and they happen to come a small young one. Jesus, I can’t imagine the number of times I had to jump up from bed and run bare footed, sometimes almost naked to save the hapless young rabbits from the vicious pecking attacks of a female fowl. The big rabbits are not spared too, but they escape being pecked and clawed to death most times, since they are bigger and run faster.
There use to be one of the big rabbits named “Tiger”, who never ran when attacked but fought back. He became the undisputed King of the animal kingdom. He never gave up a fight, and thus became the savior of the rabbit race in my compound.
Unfortunately he had to die prematurely, and ended up in my family’s pot of stew. But the painful aspect of his early demise was that he didn’t pass on the attitude of not “taking shit”, from anybody, oops sorry, any chicken, to the other rabbits. Therefore none of the rabbits have actually stood up to the threat of the female chicken in my compound. It is so disheartening watching those ugly looking, scruffy and witch like chickens chasing the healthy looking, energetic, and fine rabbits, who simply run to escape and don’t fight back.
Looking at the animal kingdom in my compound had taught me an important lesson, “We need a little tiger in ourselves”. We shouldn’t run from problems or situations, which only make us get chased now, again and again. Sometimes, most times, or better still, every time, we should face and meet such problems headlong. At best we go over the problem and progress, or at least we pass by it, bruised or wounded but still alive, or at worst we end up under it.
“Why run all your life and still end up dead, when you can stand and fight, (and if God wills it), live to tell the story”.