Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

So welcome to the Gathering Room. As I said, it is a freezing cold Sunday here in Pennsylvania,

and I have a story to go with that. This is one of those stories that you remember to the end of your life.

And as I was sitting thinking, what shall I talk about on the gathering room?

All I could imagine talking about was what happened yesterday.

Because what happened yesterday was big.

So it started out the day before yesterday in the evening when my dogs started barking and

barking and barking at something in the backyard. So we let them out and somebody poked their head out

and said, I think he's barking. I think they're barking at a bird that can't fly.

And we were like, no, they're fine. Let them back in the house. So they came back in the house.

The next day yesterday, Roe, Row and Mangan, the gracious badger, was looking out the window and saw

what looked like a round blue puff ball in the backyard. She didn't know what it was.

She went out to sea and it was a blue jay that had tucked his head under his wing and puffed up

his feathers as big as they get to survive the night, which was no degrees. It was very, very cold. So here's this little

puffball, and at first she thought he'd been decapitated by a fox, but why would it have left

him there? We couldn't figure that out. So we decided he was probably alive. And Roe is very brave,

having grown up in Australia, where everything that lives

besides the humans wants to kill you. I love animals. I love all animals, but there are a lot of

venomous animals in Australia. Check it out. Anyway, somebody once wrote of our Australia, our native language is screaming,

just discussing the snakes and spiders that you get there. Anyway, so Roe is very brave. And she went

out and she took a towel and she flumped it over yonder puffball. And she gently gathered

the Blue Jay up and came in and put him in a box. And we wrapped him in towels and

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