*This whole post can be found at Ignatian Spirituality’s DotMagis Blog.
In our urban backyard, we have a chicken coop constructed just right to fit our five, almost full-grown chickens. My animal-loving family promises me eggs are just around the corner. Having a chicken coop in the backyard, however, means other animals are sometimes attracted to our yard at night—including, most recently, a pesky, neighborhood rat that continuously tried to break into the coop.
My husband considered a variety of ways to take care of the rat, finally settling on setting a couple of traps in our yard. My oldest son was intrigued by the process. I thought he’d be disturbed by the idea of a rat trap, but he seemed OK with it overall. He just had a lot of questions. Then, several weeks after we had solved our rat problem, he came home from camp with a simple cardboard box. “What’s that for?” I asked him. He went on to tell me his elaborate scheme for trapping a rat alive in this cardboard box and bringing it to his best friend at camp so he could pet him.
Check out the rest over at Ignatian Spirituality’s DotMagis blog!