An Eagle's Egg

An American Indian tells about a brave who found an eagle’s egg and put it into the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life, the changeling eagle, thinking he was a prairie chicken, did what the prairie chickens did. He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled. And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, that’s how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.

Years passed. And the changeling eagle grew very old. One day, he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

“What a beautiful bird!” said the changeling eagle to his neighbor. “What is it?”

“That’s an eagle—the chief of the birds,” the neighbor clucked. “But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.”

So the changeling eagle never gave it another thought. And it died thinking it was a prairie chicken.

The Pursuit of Excellence, Ted W. Engstrom, (Zondervan Corporation,1982), pp. 15-16

Nuns in a fire

Several Nuns were in their second floor convent one night when a fire broke out. The Nuns took their habits off and tied them together to make a rope to get out of the building via the window.

After they were safely on the ground and out of the building, a news reporter came over to one of the Nuns and said to her, "Weren't you afraid that the habits could have ripped or broke since they are old?

The Nun Replied, "No, don't you know old habits are hard to break".

Tougher as they get older

An elderly teacher, with a pupil by his side, took a walk through a forest. Suddenly he stopped and pointed to four plants close at hand. The first was just beginning to peep above the ground, the second had rooted itself pretty well into the earth, the third was a small shrub, while the fourth was a full-sized tree. The tutor said to his young companion, 'Pull up the first plant.' The boy did so eagerly, using only his fingers.

'Now pull up the second.' The youth obeyed but found the task more difficult.

'Do the same with the third,' he urged. The boy had to use all his strength to uproot it.

'Now,' said the instructor, 'try your hand with the fourth.' The pupil put his arms around the trunk of the tall tree and couldn't even shake its leaves. 'This, my son, is just what happens with our bad habits. When they are young, we can remove them readily; but when they are old, it's hard to uproot them, though we pray and struggle ever so sincerely.'"

From the Heidelberg Herald.

Avoid the ruts

Years ago when the western U. S. was being settled, roads were often just wagon tracks. These rough trails posed serious problems for those who journeyed on them. On one of these winding paths was posted a sign which read: “Avoid this rut or you’ll be in it for the next 25 miles!”

Source unknown

Sayings

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables. - Spanish proverb

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.
Horace Mann

Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson

Bad habits are like comfortable beds—easy to get into but hard to get out of.

Sources Unknown

The habits of Fleas!

This YouTube video shows that fleas can be trained to live within an anvironment and not change. Are we sometimes like that?