POST by RENZ: Birds of a Feather, We've Learned to Treasure

Oliver and his pet pigeon

Oliver and Brian are my foster brothers. One of them is five but looks like he is three. The other one is eight and looks pretty much his age but probably a little younger. Billy is my other foster brother but is not their real brother. He is three and sort of looks like Oliver. The only way they look alike is that they are both brown, have pot bellies, and look the same age and because of that some people ask me if they are twins.

The two little boys come from a poor home. Their mother left their father with the boys and he found another lady and they have a little girl now. Their dad gets drunk very often and their step-mother doesn't really think of them as her children, so most of the time if they are not with us they are out in the streets with their sling shots hunting for food.

When they are at our house they love to be inside because when they go home they pretty much never are in the house. Also when they are here and not inside they are in our other paddock that we have. It has a lot of fruit trees and so they are almost always in them picking fruit and playing games in them. We have a bunch of plants, bushes, and trees and they are almost always in them.

One day, the boys were playing outside in the garden when they heard some chirping from some little birds but they couldn't see where they were. So, they started searching the trees. Oliver was in a plant searching when he found a birds nest. He called all the other little boys over so that he could show them what he had found.

In the nest were 2 little pigeons and the mother was nowhere to be seen. Right when they were going to decide to do something with them, they had to go inside to get ready to go to bed. So they would have to wait for the next day to do anything to them because it was too late to do anything in that moment.

The next day they got up bright and early so that they could do something with the birds before anyone would tell them to stop and leave them alone. The branch that the birds' nest and birds were in was too hard for them to reach so they had to try and figure something out to get them down.

They started to throw rocks at the nest but that didn't do anything to get them down. Oliver started to climb up the trunk that had the birds' nest was in. He got the birds nest and threw it down to the other kids. Billy caught one of the birds and dumbly gave it to the dog and he ate it. The other one they kept for a pet and still have it. He treats it like his son. Oliver is learning to love God's creatures and that he doesn't always have to kill and eat them.