Ollie and The Samaritan Leper

If you've been reading 'Hertzler Doings' you already know that we have the honor of being adopted by a wild turkey. It happened this way.

Several months ago, Philip was mowing a field and ran over a turkey nest. The eggs were sitting there unharmed, and he wasn't sure what had happened to the mother. He gently brought the eggs home and put them in his incubator. About a week later, Phil had the same experience. He added his eggs to the eggs already in the incubator.

Phil printed off some blueprints about how to build a poultry brooder house. Dave P. came over and built a sturdy pen and when the young turkeys were old enough, they left their cedar-chipped-heat-lamped wooden nursery box and graduated to their new independent housing. They always acted scared of us and would run into a far corner whenever we came near. We fed and watered them until they were old enough to fend for themselves and then the day came to release them. Shortly afterwards, we found the remains of two turkeys. I think there were nearly 15-20 of them to begin with.

Then, we noticed that one of them had come back. He started hanging around. We named him Oliver, or Ollie, in honor of Oliver North. We brought his familiar food and water containers over to the porch and he began to come even closer. We put a turkey decoy up into our weeping cherry tree by the porch steps to teach him to roost up off the ground at night. He jumps up at dusk to roost beside it. During daylight hours, he follows Phil around wherever he goes. Phil takes walks around the house with him and kicks up a grasshopper harvest for Ollie and Ollie is most grateful. Phil sits on the porch banister at night and talks to Ollie. "Turk, turk, turk...Pretty Bird." And Ollie comes and struts around Phil and preens his feathers. One night, he jumped on Phil's head on his way up the tree, and squatted down to roost there for the night. Last evening, he roosted in Phil's arms. He likes Michael too. He likes all of us, really. He also enjoys chumming around with our German Shepherd, Angel. They sleep in the shade of the peppermint tea together during hot days. He takes walks with Angel and me and he runs right next to the tires of our vehicles whenever we pull away. I think he thinks he's human. Or a dog.

The other day I said to Phil, "This reminds me of a story in the Bible but I can't think of what it is." Phil said, "The ten lepers. And the Samaritan leper who came back." "That's it!" I exclaimed.

Think about it. Do you know the story? There were 10 lepers and they cried out to Jesus, asking Him to heal them. He told them to go show themselves to the priests and on their way there, they were healed. One of them came back to thank Jesus. He was a Samaritan.

Ollie is like that Samaritan leper.
He came back to thank us for saving his life.
Who knows what would have eaten him before he had a chance to come out of his shell.
He says thank you to us every day while he follows us around,
desiring our fellowship and company.

The game commission officer came the other day to give us some crop damage tags. He saw Ollie following Phil around. He said, "He's free to go, isn't he?" "Yes, he's free to go." And it was legal, then, you know. As long as a wild thing is free to go, he is free to stay.

I want to be more like Ollie.

I want to follow Jesus around,
thanking Him for saving my life,
eating the food He kicks up for me,
and roosting in His arms at night.