By Guest Blogger Chicken Wrangler Sara
Our son Matt has a project car. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t exactly what he wanted when he bought it, but he has learned a lot.
The latest lesson involved the slave cylinder. I don’t know much about this part except that it is necessary to drive the car. Matt bought a new one and put it on the car. Shortly thereafter, there were pieces of slave cylinder and brake fluid all over the driveway. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but Matt was frustrated enough that I didn’t ask and let Matt drive my truck to work.
When Beekeeper Brian got home, he was equally frustrated with the situation and when I left for Bible Study driving his car, he was sitting in the driveway looking at the collection of slave cylinder parts.
After Bible Study ended, a classmate told me she had seen Brian and he told her to let me know he had switched cars but had parked in the same spot.
Part of my brain wanted to ask questions about how he’d come to have my truck. I just ignore them, as I usually do. Sometimes you just don’t want to know the answers.
When I got home, I noticed a lack of car parts in the driveway. Matt explained that Dad had used a magnet and copper wire to retrieve parts from where they were not supposed to be and put them in the correct spot. Then he had driven Matt’s car to the pool where Matt was working, picked up my truck, brought it to the church, and took his car to get gas.
Once again, Beekeeper Brian’s ability to fix things amazed me and thrilled Matt. Brian had already put in a full day’s work at the school district and overtime as a mechanic. Exhausted, he headed for bed, but the day was not over yet.
As I was checking my e-mail, I heard a scratching sound coming from behind the wardrobe in the living room. A quick look around confirmed that all dogs were put up for the night so I went over to the wardrobe for a closer listen.
When we remodeled our bathroom in Canton years ago, there was a similar scratching coming from under the floor. It gave me nightmares. Twenty years later, I simply walked into the bedroom and told Beekeeper Brian that something was scratching the wall behind the wardrobe.
After a brief examination, he said, “Go get my pellet rifle.”
The questioning part of my brain went into overdrive, but the rational part didn’t really want to know answers just yet.
I calmly handed him the rifle and returned to my computer.
His next question: “Do we still have those mouse traps?”
After some searching, I located one trap. He set it and said, “At least it is just a mouse.”
“As opposed to what?” I asked hesitantly.
“A squirrel or a rat” was his answer.
I was suddenly glad that our reptile days were long gone until I remembered snakes don’t have fingernails. It couldn’t have been a snake.
This morning Beekeeper Brian checked the mousetrap. Success!
Now he wants to repeat the process to see if the mouse had any friends. Next, he’ll fix the hole the mouse chewed in the wall. A renaissance man/beekeeper’s work is never done.
Courage — confronting a difficult, frightening, painful, or disturbing situation when our first instinctive reaction is to flee.
The Cowardly Lion in the classic film The Wizard of Oz learned courage must ultimately come from within.
