Bein' Sneaky

I was (gently) chastised today for not posting more often (you know who you are ;D), so my question is, "Do two posts in the same day count?"

Some of you know that L and I raise, race and sell racing homing pigeons as a side business/hobby. We have done pretty well in the races in previous years, and our birds sell for reasonable amounts most of the time. We are, however, planning on selling out this year; and my goal is to be birdless by the end of 2008.

All that said, L has a fellow flyer that he has traded breeding stock with in the past, and he still has one pair of our birds. The "breeding fee" is a couple of the babies each year from the matings. L has told this friend that we are going to be letting our birds go, but the friend said he had some babies for us, and wouldn't take "no" for an answer when we said we really didn't want them. Loft space for most breeders is at a premium, and I'm sure he didn't want the extras in his loft, either. So, Wednesday night I came home at about 8:30 to find a message from the USPO stating I had birds to be picked up. I was tired, and went to bed, thinking that I would leave early Thursday morning to get them, wondering as well how I was going to manage to get to the post office and back, get the birds situated, get a shower and get back to SA to work all in the space of 90 minutes.

I forgot the birds. I went to work Thursday morning, worked all day, went grocery shopping that evening and went home. I had no more than walked into the kitchen when I thought: "BIRDS!" Too late now. So I started praying that they would be ok for another 12 hours (no water in those boxes) while they waited for morning. Still same dilemma. At 6:30 AM the phone rang. It was one of the girls from work asking if I could wait and come in at 1 PM. Yeah, that works better for me, too. At 7:15 the phone rang again. It was the lady from the PO asking if I was going to come get the birds and would it help if I was able to pick them up a little earlier than 8AM. Oh, Yeah! So I was there at 7:40 to collect them and found that they had only been in the box for 3 days. That's the normal shipping time. They had been mailed Tuesday and arrived overnight, nearly unheard of even for livestock. So the Lord heard and answered my prayer before I even knew I needed an answer, and the birds are now safe and secure in their (temporary) new home.