Squirrel in the House

This is not an advertisement for rodent removal.

I came home after a long day and found a squirrel in the house. It had probably been in the house all day, if not longer! It had nibbled on the wooden window frames and pulled out part of a wooden beam. It was petrified. I got a large bucket with a lid and put on leather gloves and a canvas coat. I caught the poor thing and stuck it in the bucket, popped on the lid, and took it outside.

The event reminded me of this: we need an accurate view of man in order to deal with the world of animals. Dealing with children means that inevitably they will tell a scary story of how an animal attacked someone. And while this does happen, and that animal needs to be dealt with appropriately, generally all animals are afraid of man. God made man to have dominion over the earth. This was expressly repeated after the flood when God told Noah, “The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands” (Gen. 9:2).

Spiders, snakes, mice, and skunks all have one thing in their nature– stay away from mankind. While I am not advocating for swimming in shark infested waters or being careless when hiking in grizzly bear forests, I am advocating giving children who are afraid of animals an accurate view of their place as vice regents over the earth.

Are there some animals I am not fond of? You bet. But I do not want to communicate to my children that they need to be unreasonably afraid of God’s creatures.