A Zande would never keep a guinea fowl as a pet. The lives of the Zandes were in natural harmony with the part of Africa in which they lived. Since they were hunters, they intentionally burned off vast areas of the grasslands and used long nets to try to ensnare the fleeing animals. The fires swept for miles and the tall, tangled, elephant grass disappeared. The scattered hardwood trees still stood, the thick bark only charred, the leaves gone, to become barren like the black earth and the burnt grass stubble. The dense jungle-like forests that followed the wandering valleys stood unscathed year after year. The rains returned and lush new grass grew up everywhere.

The only animal that might be considered a Zande’s pet would be the small, silent, brown dogs that were always around. In order to survive in the village, they scrounged continuously for food. They would get kicked if they got in the way. They tolerated anything from the children, but they loyally followed their owner whenever he went hunting. You see, hunting was good when visibility extended for miles as the grass began to grow back. They were then well fed, especially when a large animal had been killed and the hunters spent days in one place drying meat. A scrap of the animal’s entrails might be thrown to the hunter’s dog, clear evidence that he was truly a pet.

We were thinking that a guinea fowl was only meat to a Zande, a game bird to the sportsman, and somehow something else to the farmer. Could it be called the farmer’s pet? How does an animal come to be considered a pet?

Now I find that the definition of a pet is “a domestic or tamed animal kept for companionship or pleasure”.

I mentioned earlier that an old seasoned farmer, Ellen’s Dad, stated, “Around here it is produce or else.” I also related that at the start of summer Jack had three guinea fowl cocks, and I had eight guinea fowl hens. After I exchanged two hens for a cock his farm produced a total of about forty keets that hatched out. He thinks he still has 18 to 20. The remaining birds on my farm laid in excess of 100 eggs, but as of this morning the count here is two and a half. Has his Cedar Park farm been more productive than Grandpa Paul’s farm?

I haven’t counted mine today, but I have heard the old, slow, rooster start to crow this morning. I then heard the loud clattering alarm of a guinea fowl, just before a kestrel flew out from behind the barn and off into the grey overcast sky. Maybe the target bird had been the hen that limps, having lost half of one leg in a trap.

Jack knows how some of his were lost, but others just disappeared. The three that died on the highway near his house had refused to be educated. When trying to chase them away from the road Jack was attacked by one. “For that, you are on your own he told them!” They took the “highway to Heaven” Jack said. Six are in a cage waiting for Jack to catch some more so he can deliver the 10 promised. His farm seems to be productive. He did say that the remaining ones are no longer scared of him and come to be fed. Do pets need to be productive? He asked if I wanted any more. I declined.

My birds weren’t productive as measured in farm income. Nobody else seems to want the eggs, I found it hard to even give them away. The flock was certainly not increasing in numbers, but I do enjoy having them around. I guess two and a half might be just about right if all I want them for is to have them around and care for them. Their job, when created, was to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Maybe they would succeed if there were no hawks and no foxes, no coyotes, or mink, or traps, or hunters.

I still didn’t know if the kestrel had been successful in his hunt. Jack informed me that the hawks could eat the entire bird, leaving nothing behind, and owls too, could have consumed the bird at night, so I looked for clues to what the kestrel may have taken away this morning.

The raspberry patch was the place to check. The banty hen had raised her chicks under that tangle of thorny bushes, and the kestrel may have tried many times to get the chicks. When they were small they always obeyed, hiding instantly when the hen gave her distinctive warning signal. They were now half grown and were following their mother less closely than before. The kestrel was probably still after the chicks that were now nearly grown.

I found scattered feathers, from both chickens and guinea fowl, some undamaged, and others a little mangled and wet. There was one buff colored feather that could have come from the hen, and an assortment of speckled feathers.

The thicket was rather dense but, even looking carefully, I found it impossible to confirm if the four chicks and the cripple guinea fowl were among those I could see. The birds were apparently still terrified and scarcely moved as I peered in from different angles.

Later, I found all four chicks and the crippled guinea, but not the mother hen. The banty hen had apparently been eaten herself when trying to protect her chicks.

Maybe if there were no chickens the hawks wouldn’t be so plentiful. That kestrel could well be descended from those that hatched out in my barn many years earlier. There was a hole in the siding and the hay bales were stacked up against the wall, in the loft where the nest was inaccessible to the hawk’s enemies. I found the nest when feeding out hay to my cows and shared what I found with my son, Tim. They were beautiful birds nearing adulthood and soon flew out to start hunting on their own. The hawks are perfectly created for hunting and there is no way I could keep one as a pet, no way to tame or domesticate one as a companion, though I had tried when a child at Rethy.

That hawk was a Black Shouldered Kite with finely barred markings on its white breast. I bought it from some African boys, but how they caught it I don’t know. While I was at school it patiently sat on the perch to which I had tied it using a long, soft, cotton string. I begged meat from the dorm, tried to catch big grasshoppers for it, and set a snare in the dorm forest to catch a rat if possible. I had dreams of having my own hunting falcon riding on my gloved hand.

It did begin to recognize me each time, I came, becoming alert, anticipating the food I regularly provided. I watched fascinated as it daintily took the meat, and with his talons clamped it down on the perch, tearing off bits to eat with its sharp hooked beak. One day I came to check on it and found only the cotton string stretched out its full length indicating the direction it had flown away.

The first pet I remember having was when I was five years old before I started school at Rethy Academy in Africa.

I remember that I was able to find chameleons. I would look for a long time on the lantana hedge that had the fuzzy leaves, the tiny bunches of colored flowers, and the little clumps of green berries. The green berries would grow as big as BBs and eventually turn black. Some of the kids ate them, but I didn’t. When the berries were black, I think the chameleons found more insects on those lantana hedges. Chameleons were hard to find since they would stay completely still and make themselves the same shade of green as the hedge. The patterns on their backs and the patterns made by the twigs and leaves looked just the same. The hedge was the best place to look for chameleons.

I would stand very still for a long time, and sometimes a chameleon would move; then I would finally see him. Chameleons have skinny legs and feet sort of like mittens with no separate toes. The tiny claws, two on one side and three on the other side, help them to clamp onto the branch they are climbing. Chameleons move the front foot on one side and the back foot on the other side at the same time, little by little, until each foot reaches the new place on which to hold. They feel around with their feet for the best spot without even looking. Then, they move the other two feet.

When chameleons sneak up on a fly, their tails stick out straight behind them, not touching anything. They advance bit by bit, maybe when they think the fly isn’t looking. Their eyes bulge way out on both sides of their head. Wrinkly skin covers the entire eye except the tiny hole in the center where they can see. Their eyes roll around and around to look in front, in back, sideways, and up and down. Each eye goes a different way until they are ready to catch a fly.

The chameleon I had been watching stopped. Both eyes checked all around again, but then they came together, almost cross-eyed, both focusing directly on a small fly. The layered skin under the chameleon’s chin started bulging out bigger and bigger. His mouth turned up almost like a smile, opening just a little crack.

Suddenly, so fast I would have missed it if I hadn’t been concentrating, the chameleon’s long tongue shot out and the end stuck to the fly. The tongue was even longer than the chameleon! A Chameleon almost never misses. His long tongue quickly disappears, curling up somewhere inside as he pulls the fly into his grinning mouth. Once again his eyes begin searching around and around in different directions while chewing very slowly.

I grabbed for him. He couldn’t move very quickly, though he tried to get away. He might have dropped off the branch down into the bush and then it would have been nearly impossible to find him again. I caught him around his fat middle. He tried to bite, but the rough edge of his mouth wasn’t very sharp, and his mouth was smaller than my fingertip. Some chameleons hiss too. Even though my little African friend was scared of them, I wasn’t. Chameleons have bad spirits in them he told me, but I didn’t believe it. The chameleon knew he was caught, or maybe he wasn’t so scared because after a little while he stopped squirming.

When I freed him, he started walking across my hand. He might have wanted to walk off, but I kept on putting the other hand in front so that he never got to the edge. He slowed down. He stopped. He sat there on my thumb, looking round and round with his bulging, wandering eyes. He slowly turned a dull black and his markings got blurred. He curled his tail and became very still. I think he liked my warm little thumb. I finally had a pet.

I kept him in my window on the curtain, but he didn’t turn red. He got sort of brown. I caught flies for him in some of the other windows, but he didn’t seem hungry any more. I got tired of watching him. After dinner, I proudly showed him to my mom, but she said, “I don’t want him in the house. He might go walking on the floor and someone might step on him and squash him.”

“If he is a mother he could have tiny little chameleons,” I told her, “lots of them. They would be just this big! Wouldn’t that be neat?”

“You better let him go,” she said. I don’t think she thought it would be easy not to step on all those little chameleons. I took him outside and put him on a rosebush in my mother’s rose garden, but he got lost.

What is lost when a pet is gone?

Sometimes a person gets tired of his pet and he wants to get rid of it. He bought a cute kitten and it turned into a cat that claws the furniture. The puppy turned into a vicious dog that, after being chained outside for a year, will even bite his owner. The pet provided neither companionship nor pleasure and the owner may be glad it’s gone.

My first chameleon got lost in a rosebush. My Black Shouldered Kite flew away. Someone shot my pet crow. A kestrel just ate my banty hen. I still have two and one half guinea fowl and recently got a goat.

All those are just pets, not people, though my African Grey parrot that talked English was with me nearly 40 years before he died.

I wonder if we should even try to think how God might feel when we forget Him or deny and refuse to acknowledge Him as our master. Didn’t God create us that we might have a relationship with Himself, that He might take pleasure in us?

The Good Shepherd cares for the sheep, they are His and He loves them. When one is lost, He leaves the 99 and goes in search of the one that is lost. When it is found he returns rejoicing.

Are you one of His sheep?