WHAT happened to DAVIES CHILUFYA shouldn’t have occurred had he listened to his inner voice because, five hours after returning from church one day, a rude shock awaited his family. Red ants had swarmed the chicken-run and killed a third of their five-day-old broiler chicks. Read on..

WHAT happened to me should not have occurred had I listened to my conscience, or the still small voice.
Quite so often, many people- myself included- have failed to obey their urging conscience and the results have been disastrous in most cases.
The conscious is that inner voice that speaks to us in a gentle tone, like a whisper–and often parried away as being inconsequential, but sometimes it’s important.
It may be a flash of ideas, an urging thought or a nagging feeling-anything. Unfortunately, we ignore it, because our lives are often pulled amongst the many competing demands of our modern times.
It was a Sunday morning, though I can’t recall the year, and we’d prepared ourselves as a whole family to go to church early as the cold July winds blew and the sun’s weak rays slowly warmed the ground.
As such we were all in a hurry, calling out to each other.
“Don’t forget the Bible,” my wife shouted after me.
“It’s already in the car,” I answered back.
Our Sunday church services usually start at 08.00 hours and my wife, who doesn’t want to miss the early morning Bible study, had already prepared herself.
She’d bathed Themwa and Nellie; our two young children and both were trotting about wanting to go and meet with their peers at church.
I quickly went into the chicken-run to the back of the house and made one last inspection and hurriedly came out to drive the family to church.
I do this always, making sure that the chickens are safe and secure. I’d give them feed and water, lock the gates and unleash the dogs to keep away stray cats from the neighborhood.
But when we came back five hours later, a rude shock awaited us. Red ants had invaded the chicken-run and run amok; attacking the five-day old broiler chicks.
Thousands upon thousands of the attacking insects had swarmed the hapless little fowls and stung a third of them to death!
I was devastated. My wife was depressed. And our guard dogs could do nothing to bark away the ants. I wished they could.
The current economic situation dictates that one is enterprising and, in my case, raising chickens for sale is one way of supplementing the family income. We had been doing this for the past six months and the business had been doing very well-until now.
Previously I’d spread agricultural lime around the pens to discourage unwanted insects, but after the rains I’d reckoned that many seasonal pests had gone into hibernation –but I was wrong!
There had been some unexpected rains a couple of days ago and a part of me had whispered that I take extra precautions; and had I listened to that small inner voice I wouldn’t have found myself in the awkward situation I found myself in.
I probably would have gone round the fence (as I did at the pick of the wet season), and seen that the ants were nearby. In this case, I’d have ensured that this army of invaders did not come near my yard.
“This is terrible,” I said to no one in particular as I took off my jacket to rush into the chicken-run and smoke away the aggressive ants.
“Why God, why? ’Moaned my wife who was all in tears. She’d all the reasons to cry; for we needed some liquid cash from the chicken sales to pay school fees and send our niece to college.
But it was Nellie and Themwa who were mesmerised at the whole episode. In their short lives they’d not seen how small insects like red ants could so overpower 200 chicks and kill almost half of them. They wondered why the birds could not fight back.
“They are so tiny,” observed little Nellie.
“They work as a team to attack, remember on TV-Nat-Geo Wild, remember?.”
The older sibling was trying to educate the younger.
I didn’t want to hear their little lectures. I was busy fighting the ants, while my wife was trying frantically to resuscitate some gasping birds. She tried; plucking out the little ants from the birds’ feathers and grinding them under her sandals.
In time we managed to win the battle. But there we were- 84 birds dead; our bodies sooted with smoke- and then we had to start plucking out tens of red ants that had climbed our bodies to intimidate us.
All this wouldn’t have happened if I’d listened to my still small voice.
But we were comforted when after six weeks the remaining 100 birds grew to more than  two kilogrammes and a regular customer came along and ordered all of them at a fairly good price.
The loss from the dead chicks was significant, but the lessons learnt will live longer, and one of the lessons is that we must learn to listen to the still small voice.
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