Janice asked her father to help her make a Christmas gift for her mother. “Why don’t we make a collage of things like pinecones, seeds, acorns, feathers and leaves. You know how much your mother loves Nature. I have a box full of these.” He emptied the box which had acorns, pinecones and seeds. “What’s that?” Janice asked, pointing to a few long, brownish-red feathers. Her father remembered, “It is of a pheasant whom I had freed. It was all caught up in some netting. I cut the netting off. I’ll never forget the look in that bird’s eyes when it felt the string being taken off. It flew into the air. I felt happy because I’d saved its life.” Janice’s father had tears in his eyes. “Lucky pheasant! Can I have one of them to keep?” That night, her father saw the pheasant’s feather lying on Janice’s pillow, next to her face.
The Pheasant’s Feather
