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Angels with tails:

Christmas miracle in the Virginia Forest



imageEvery Christmas seems to come with its own story of inspiration and in the recession shrouded Christmas of 2008 when inspiration is needed most, a Christmas story to stir the soul comes direct from the forests of Virginia. It is chronicled for all to read courtesy of the wonderful writing of Jane H. Furse over at the New York Daily News. Jane’s story is all about a toddler lost in the cold Virginia woods for a long and uncertain 21 hours and about the two puppies credited with saving him from death by hypothermia.

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Leaving their annual Christmas preparation behind, hundreds of friends, family and law enforcement officials, fearing the worst, were out in the thick woods of Halifax County, searching to find who everyone came to call, `The Missing Toddler in the Forest’. Dark-eyed Jaylynn Thorpe, 3, had wandered away from his babysitter sometime around 4 p.m. on Friday, not to be seen again for a very long time. Twenty one hours is a long time to wait for anything. When it marks the time a toddler is missing, it’s an eternity. As time marched forward, some people, in spite of themselves, were beginning to lose faith. Not Halifax County Sheriff Stanley Noblin: “The only thing we wanted to do was just keep searching until we found him,” the stalwart sheriff told reporters. In a season where Christmas carols can be heard drifting from radio stations everywhere, Jaylynn’s frantic family knew the more time that went by, the more risk for the little guy’s survival. “We didn’t forget the issue that 17 degrees was almost unbearable,” said the father, James Thorpe. “People all over the state of Virginia was down there looking for that child. For a while there, one time, I didn’t know whether they would find him or not,” said the child’s grandmother and guardian, Katherine Elliott. But somehow in a dark unfriendly forest, the lost little boy and the two family puppies had wandered up to a mile in the dark--even across a highway--and it wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that members of the search team came across a sight none of them is likely to ever forget. There was Jaylynn sitting by a tree, the two loyal puppies nestled against him! The little boy didn’t say anything, didn’t cry, didn’t yell for Momma. According to rescue team member, Jerry Gentry he “just opened his arms up like, `I’m ready to go.’” “When I first saw him, he was like, `Momma I got cold. I slept in the woods last night. The puppies kept me warm.’ He told me that...the dogs slept up against him. And I’m sure the body heat kept him warm,” said his mother, Sarah Ingram. Billie Jo Roach, another member of the search party that found the boy, said the puppies refused to leave his side. Who will ever forget that as the child was placed in an ambulance to be taken to a local hospital for examination, the puppies were watching where he went. “Where he went, they went,” Roach said. These were puppies not mature adult dogs, reminding us all that God’s Creatures, large and small, were created with wondrous reasons in Mind. The puppies weren’t named in the story, but both for sure fall under that special category of “Angels with Tails”. “As word went out that the child was alive and well, family members cheered and cried for joy. “Praise the Lord! Welcome home, Jaylynn!” yelled his aunt, Amy Zimmerman.” In the end, close to some 300 people from North Carolina and Virginia had joined in the desperate 21-hour search to find Jaylynn. “I love you! God bless you,” Ingram told the rescue teams. “I think I just said, `Thank you Lord!..for us to have another chance,” said the child’s father.” And Jane H. Furse, who must surely have a little boy of her own to write the way she does, explained how Jaylynn spent Saturday night under observation at Halifax Regional Hospital and “chowed down on a double cheeseburger, a hot dog, strawberry ice cream and French fires”. Also how, “Meanwhile, the furry heroes, their tails wagging, were rewarded with food. “I definitely call this a miracle,” said Noblin.” And surely a little boy kept warm by two puppies in the dead of chill night comes as close as possible to 2008’s inspiring Christmas miracle!


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Judi McLeod -- Bio and Archives -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

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