I had a friend who once volunteered at Mother Teresa’s clinic in Mumbai and, when asked to clean the rancid bottom of a leper, fainted, and had to be carried out. He could never bring himself to go back, and was ashamed of that,  but he said the most beautiful thing he ever saw was the nuns cleaning the bottoms of the dying patients. Even though he couldn’t do it, he said that was as selfless a thing he had ever seen. God, he said, was in that clinic, and in those stained sheets.

A chicken is not a human.  An attack on a chicken is one of life’s small dramas, even though it tell us things about the bigger ones in some ways. Chickens lead small lives, and insignificant ones. Millions of them are chopped up and fed to people every year and hardly anyone, including me, gives it a thought. And I am no Mother Teresa. Maria and I are trying to nurse Fran back to health, and I can’t speak for her, but I don’t really know why I am doing this. I have more important things to do, and I am wary of trying to rescue all of the needy creatures in the world. If I surrendered to that, I would be swallowed whole. Chickens, like sheep, move through life with no consciousness or self-awareness that I can see. There are worthier beings.

But still, I am so drawn to caring for this creature. I go into the barn a half-dozen times to check on her. I bring her Gatorade, eggs and meal. I talk her on walks and keep the other hens away from her, lest they peck at her, cannibals that they are.

And Fran has had a filthy butt for days. Since the fox attack, she’s had diarrhea and liquid yellow stool, too gross to photograph. This morning I realized I had to clean Fran’s dirty butt, because she was in my care, and it needed to be done, and I wouldn’t ask anyone else, including Maria, to do it. So I got a bucket of warm water, some scissors, and rags and rubbed Fran’s rear feathers with warm water, snipped the large chunks off, and wiped the rest of her dry. How strange it was to be doing this, mostly  because of how good and wonderful it felt.

I thought of my friend in Mumbai, and I remembered what he said, that the divine is present in the smallest dramas of life, in the dirty butt of a chicken, and it was not difficult, or grotesque to me, but beautiful, a sacrament, a gift, a chance to understand what it means to be human to tend to another sentient creature rather than argue, complain and worry about life.

Fran looked great walking around after the cleaning. It must have felt better to her. Me too.