Your Thoughts And Beliefs
Coin
I walk my three housecats every morning for about a half a mile and then we go on to our porch and have a "snack" of kibbled cat food. In the spring of 2009 this activity attracted the attention of a lone starling. The most prominent feature of this bird was its brightly colored yellow beak.
I believe that nothing is an accident and that seemly random events have significance. With that in mind I researched some of my books and found that the color yellow represents "communication, optimism, and inspiration". I took the first letters of these words: "c" from communication, "o" from optimism, and "in" from inspiration to form the word "Coin". This became the bird's name.
Coin would wait until he noticed my cats had finished and had moved into the yard and then he would fly onto the eve of the porch posts. Coin would lean in to look at me and would chant with a loud raspy voice, "Raack! Raack!" The bird would then fly down and pick up the bits of dry food left by the cats and fly away. This is very unusual because starlings always feed together in groups. I guess Coin was a bit of a maverick among starlings!
Each morning the ritual would be repeated and this continued every morning into the midsummer. In the heat of that summer as suddenly as Coin appeared he disappeared. The fall came and went and we experienced the worst winter that we have had in fourteen years. Record snow falls blanketed the landscape with drifts of snow that were over fifteen feet high! Eventually the snow melted and it began to look more like spring. The migrating birds returned and I often wondered what had happened to Coin.
One day I was sitting in my porch chair after I had given the cats their "snack" and a starling flew up on the eve of our porch posts. I watched and waited. Could it really be? No, I remember thinking it was probably just a coincidence. Then suddenly I heard the familiar, "Raack! Raack!" Coin had returned and he flew down and helped himself to a snack and flew away!
Coin now has an aluminum tray where I place some food for him every morning. The cats have even grown to accept him as part of the routine and a member of our family.
I was thinking how this bird was cared for by the Creator through the terrible winter and how he migrated back to the same location and remembered his personal "snack bar". It is truly amazing.
Then I mused about the bird's name and how it came into being with the words communication, optimism, and inspiration. These traits and other positive aspects of life seem to also disappear from time to time and I find myself wondering what had happened to them and where they have gone. But like Coin my hopes and positive expectations reappear after the long hard winter of my soul and I am once again blessed in my experience by the Creator.
Copyright © 2010 Jami Sell
Jami Sell is an author and Life Strategist
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