Fleas

Tony Woodlief is fighting the battle of the snake, but I am hunting smaller game: Lamb is covered with fleas. Mind you, I'm sure Oscar has almost as many, but he's brown and black. She's white. Every time I touch her I find one. Or three. And that's so disgusting, because I know for every one I find, there are a dozen more hidden somewhere else on her body or in the carpet.

Did you ever wonder why God made fleas?

Did you ever read Corrie Ten Boom?

Well, then you already know why.

"They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28. A single meeting night might include a recital of the Magnificat in Latin by a group of Roman Catholics, a whispered hymn by some Lutherans, and a sotto-voice chany by Eastern Orthodox women. With each moment the crowd around up would swell, packing the nearby platforms, hanging over the edges, until the high structures groaned and swayed.

At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. These were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the light bulb. I would think of Haarlem, each substantial church set behind its wrought-iron fence and its barrier of doctrine. And I would know again that in darkness God's truth shines most clear."

And what kept the guards away so these women could worship together? Their barracks were so infested with fleas no one but the prisoners would enter.

I try to keep this in mind as I pick the vermin from Lambie.