I think I had a taste of the New Earth! (Isaiah 65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, said the LORD).
As I was shoveling a path to the woodpile after the snow storm of the century in southern Arkansas, some 11-13 inches of snow, causing electrical outages and broken pipelines in many towns and counties, when there in front of me fluttered a little brown bird with orangey colored breast and white outer tail feathers. I hadn’t seen such a bird before in this area so I knew I just had to look it up. It landed about two feet in front of me and stayed about two feet away from me as I shoveled and walked down the path I had shoveled. It picked and scratched at the newly exposed leaves with a different sort of scratch, moving both feet at the same time as it scratched. It wasn’t a bit afraid of me which is the part I enjoyed so thoroughly! At one time I had to stop so I wouldn’t step on it, and wait for it to move out of the way. It was a novel experience! An out-of-this-world experience!
It was a female Eastern Towhee which I had difficulty finding in my bird books since they show pictures of the males which are black instead of brown.