Hmm… Looks like a Mack Truck (lots of those around here) sacrificed his front alignment, smashing into the mountain side of Holy Souls Mountain one lane gravel road. This seems to have saved an oncoming vehicle from swerving down into the deep ravine and very possible injury and death on the other side of that hair-pin blind curve. Very courteous of him! That’s what we like to see. I always warn priests on their way here to be extra careful on this road. Yikes!
Due to logistical circumstances beyond everyone’s control, the neighbors wound up at Holy Mass this Sunday at the hermitage. We chatted afterward about the little homily I gave, and agreed that the best way to take note of the four last things, the best way to regard any persecution presently heating up, is to be good friends with Christ Jesus, Mary Immaculate’s Son, looking forward to bearing witness and being on our way to heaven, please God, with enthusiasm. Forget the frantic, running around like a chicken with your head cut off silliness. Our Lord is the Lord of history, and loves us with such goodness and kindness, wanting nothing more than that we be with Him forever in heaven.
That’s the neighbor’s “Charlie-dog”. Laudie did not change color and shrink and grow a twirley tail all of a sudden. Also, note the chickens in the background.
Those chickens might well be running around with their heads cut off later this week if I can’t find the other hen that ran off, chased off, really, by the rooster. He’s great with the other hens (who don’t lay eggs, but eat the eggs of the one who’s run off). He was always at war with the one hen, however, ever since he came. She was boss, and tried to assert her bossiness, but he would have none of it, and never forgot. I spotted her again yesterday, but couldn’t catch her. I think a wild monster ate her last night, as there was quite a commotion a few hundred yards down the mountain. If she’s really gone, the others, too old to lay eggs, will be butchered and given to the neighbor to freeze. I’d like to keep the rooster, but he’ll be lonely of course, crowing up a storm. I’ll have to see if I can get some chicks. Not the time of year for them, but, if I can find a half dozen, I’ll try to get them. They gotta have beaks. No debeaked chickens. Never again. Don’t know where I can chicks or pullets this time of year…
I am reminded of when I but three and a half years old, and was taught how to chop the heads off chickens. I could hardly hold the hatchet, but was sucessful in decapitating one hen. She ran around for a full minute, it seemed, with the other chickens, as if she could still see. Maybe their brain’s are really in their backbones and feet.
The neighbor’s going to teach me the full process of butchering later this week. Yikes!
I’ll try to put up all the gory pictures as a “how to” post. I think everyone should have chickens for any upcoming difficult times.
Speaking of that, the Prepper crowd gathered within gunshot of the hermitage (if it’s a 50 caliber aimed at just the right trajectory, with just the right kind of ammunition). Yikes!
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Father, I just showed this picture to my four year old and he asked if you had wings! Isn’t that cute? I said that you didn’t have wings but that you were kind of like an angel.
Jennifer: I think my guardian angel is like an angel, being that he’s an angel. Wings for angels are the biblical symbol for their almost frightening speed with which they fulfill the will of God. They are instantaneous, with all love and good will. Yet, they are most ferocious. Jesus mentions them as a trump-all threat to those who would scandalize the vulnerable, etc. Indeed.