Mystery at Malstead's Stumpfields

("Stumpfields" is the illustrious name Greg has given our house and land)"

Even if the winds are high today, bending the Wattle trees double and sending chilly fingers through the cracks around the window frames and smoke down the chimney, it is idyllic weather for early February.   Nights and mornings snap cold, but who can complain about the 70 degree afternoons and cloudless blue skies? With flowers blooming in my rock walls and the veggie garden giving us zucchini, lettuce, carrots and the occasional strawberry, I know, compared to my Western friends, living in Western worlds, that this is not winter.

In fact its easy to think at times I am in paradise. The teeming throngs, the heat, the pollution and chaotic noise of Indian city life is just a few hours away down the mountain, but it may as well be a million. There is a certain isolation in these hills. And while not luxurious, the apparent peace certainly can lull me into a sense that everything really is good, ordered and beautiful. The mountains rising before me are pristine. The air here is clear. My mind wants to forget the uglier realities.

Baking Christmas cookies with my children and sister in law and her kids playing Settlers in the living room, joyous shouts ringing with good natured teasing, it felt picture perfect. (see my blog “Christmas is coming,”)Our morning was full of gift-giving and gasps of surprise. Our Christmas dinner (roast pork with stuffing, baked vegetable pie, sweet potatoes and multitudes of other dishes) was sublime. All that good will and good tidings were palatable, tangible. We were warm, well fed, and truly enjoying each other.

Nothing could have prepared us for what awaited us outside our front door. Nothing perhaps except the vaguest sense that perhaps things were too good to be true.

As we all piled out the front door to feed the horses, dogs and cats their Christmas dinner, Rachael screamed first. There, head down on the stone stairs with his body above him was Oscar, our dog of 5 years. The white foam on his lips was the unmistakable sign of poison. Cyanide to be exact. We tore our shocked children (and niece and nephew) inside away from his body.

Greg and I were puzzled. Our house is 300 meters from the road. How could he have found poison this far into the woods? We banished thoughts of a deliberate poisoning from our minds. We weren't ready (especially on Christmas day!) to think that someone could be vindictive, could have done this to us on purpose. Besides, we have no enemies here. (OK if at this point you are thinking how idealist, naive and stupid I am, you are right!)

To say the children were grief-stricken would be an understatement. The howling, mourning and shock that set in on Christmas night took my breath away, and left me no time or thought to grieve at all. The children needed comfort. The wonder and well-being of Christmas was gone, and in its place was a black emptiness. A sinister darkness moved over the sunshine that poured though our windows. It settled in our hearts.

We buried Oscar the next day: a mound of field stones gathered from our land and a rough wooden cross. Ranger, our German Shepherd moved around slowly, forlorn. Christmas presents lay around untouched; food was ignored. At dinner time I let Ranger out to lick a bit of milk out of his bowl. Three minutes later I called him back inside. I heard him bark, run down the steps and as he reached me, I could see he was convulsing, foaming at the lips. He was dying from poison.  Half an hour later he lay still. 

Greg had watched his agony, tried to bring comfort.  I had stayed in the kitchen.  The children knew.  I had to keep them inside, and keep the images from implanting in their minds to come back unbidden in future dreams.

My mind whirled. His bark could have only meant someone was up at the water tower. Someone had thrown him poison over our fence. Someone had thrown poison to Oscar. It was not an accident. Someone had done this, not once, but twice, and on Christmas day and the day after.... . So, now, it seemed, we did have enemies.

But who?

We filed a criminal case, had an autopsy done on Ranger and entertained the police two days after Christmas. They seemed more interested in telling us that we needed to have government permission before owning dogs, so basically it was our fault for owning them in the first place. It was gratifying to see Greg get a little riled up on that point. He did a fair job convincing them that they were here to investigate the deliberate poisoning of two dogs. I doubt they realized that he's had 12 years of professional experience convincing policemen to do their job.

So who done it???

Our own rescued girls in the Aftercare program provided a clue. While out riding the horses during their therapy time, a local village man had told them that he was going to poison our dogs. He claimed that Oscar had killed one of his chickens. The rescued girls thought nothing of it, just an old man complaining and threatening. When the police confronted the man, his grown daughter broke down crying and said her father didn't own any chickens.

Wasn't it Shakespeare that said, "Me thinks thou dost protest too much," ?

Our big guard dogs are gone, and with them, our sense of protection. Greg is building good sturdy gates now and fences to give a semblance of boundaries and the intimation that boundaries should not be trespassed. We are laying an underground fence, so our dogs won't threaten others unduly, and that there will be no excuse to even think of poison.  But who thinks of poison, anyway?

It all shatters the illusion of perfection, bliss, peace. And I am jolted back into the ever present reality that this world is dangerous, and full of people who are cruel, vindictive and who purposely wish evil on us.  It might be easy to become paranoid.

We bought a lovely chubby little chocolate lab the other day. Ada. Then, Kavi's friends brought a “surprise puppy” to us, a little street dog Greg has named Bartholomew (Bart). Ada is a sumo-wrestler and Bart the scrappy little underweight.  We had promised Morgan a lab too... so somehow we have ended up with three!   Evenings in front of the living room fire are full of laughter at their antics. Its almost picture perfect...

They lighten our hearts and draw our minds away from the poison of hate and anger. The only remedy for pain is love. And it is easy to love these three darlings.

Why do it again?  How can we risk it again? How can we stop someone from throwing poison wrapped in chicken over our fence? Why have dogs if they are going to die.  Is God trying to tell us something?  Do the animals we own distract us too much from our ministry?  Our purpose in being in India?  All I have are questions.

But an answer does rise to the forefront as I ponder, a perspective after much loss in the last seven years.  There truly is more beauty than ugliness in this world.  It is everywhere around us, if only we have eyes to see. To give in to fear and sadness is to lose the battle.  Ranger's and Oscar's death is an opportunity to have faith, and to teach our children to keep on trying.  To never give up. 

The idyllic state, nirvana, paradise or heaven on earth is not reality, but neither is darkness and death. It is some mixture of the two, goodness and evil living so closely entwined that sometimes it is hard to separate. But we can choose where we fix our gaze. There is an interesting book I am reading, A Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp.  Gifts in the midst of loss. That's life.

Ada  (left) and Bart