There were coffee and tea and, for those who wanted it, a big cylindrical punch bowl of mimosa with a strawberry ice ring afloat in it.

Mimosa is half champagne and half orange juice. Some, I hear, also pour in grenadine, but it’s hardly needed. I sipped our mixture along with my brunch and found it just fine.

When all the guests had left, however, some mimosa remained, the ice ring barely afloat in it.

It seemed wrong to waste it, and so as we rinsed plates and filled the dishwasher, I had another cup. And then another as I scrubbed pots. By the time we had the kitchen clean, the ice ring was aground on the bowl’s bottom.

And the next morning, I felt I’d run aground, too. My head was splitting from that champagne, a drink I really don’t even like. And there I was, out early on a gray, arctic morning, stumbling down the snow-walled path to feed the sheep. I was glum, pained, and very sorry for myself.

Prancing behind me, though, was a lesser beast bursting with excitement. Blue loves snow. He kept jumping out of the toboggan-run pathway to hurl himself into drifts and tunnel through them. I paused to watch. How joyful he was_how unlike me. I would have shaken my head sadly, but didn’t; it might have cracked.

Just then Blue dove down into the snow, then breached halfway out of it. He stopped, front paws on the crusted surface, totally coated with white. I could only see, staring at me out of a snowman’s head, his mismatched eyes, one blue and one brown. Then the snowman’s mouth opened. A red tongue lolled out. And I laughed out loud and wrecked my bad mood.

That got me thinking, as I fed and watered the ewes and five lambs, just how often animals rescue me from myself. Blue, climbing from under the kitchen table in the morning, stretching his legs forward and bowing low; it looks like a gesture of respect but is really just a luxuriant stretch. And Owen, chirruping softly and rubbing against my one leg and then the other as I get Blue’s breakfast. That’s partly the old cat’s greeting, but also a reminder that he hasn’t eaten yet either.

And then the barnyard animals, present and past: The stolid ewes standing in the shed door and baaing their greetings. The lambs leaping over one another like plush toys come to life. Chickens pecking at my shoelaces in hopes they’re worms. Pigs snorting and squealing their zest for food. Geese honking insults, glaring balefully, watching for a chance to nip. In their variety, the animals raise a voice from the Hebrew scripture: "Bless Him, all you beasts of the Lord; praise and glorify His name forever!" And they do, of course, just by being themselves.

After Quaker meeting last Sunday, Gerri Haan mentioned that Scooter, their cat, is failing rapidly. He’s up in years and, as animals often do, seems to have decided it’s his time. Scooter has stopped eating. He sits staring at the unbroken surface of his water bowl as if taking a last look at himself.

We Quakers all know Scooter. Because Dick Haan is now wheelchair-bound, we sometimes hold our worship right in the Haans’ living room. Scooter is always there to greet us on arrival and, in his own way, to join the meeting. Once silence has fallen on our circle, the cat soundlessly moves among us, brushing against a leg here, sitting briefly on a lap there, settling for a while on the sofa back against someone’s neck. Behind closed eyes, we’re aware of him but undistracted. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Scooter is making his own gift. He weaves us together, deepens our shared silence.

Forgive me, but I think Scooter, Blue and Owen, the barnyard animals, and all creatures great and small are messengers, making our human lives more graceful, more grace-filled. They mediate to us something real, if indefinable. And they draw forth insights and emotions that would remain otherwise untapped. Bless them for it, I say.

Wait. Here come Robert Frost’s words, drifting forward from my classroom days: "The way a crow/ Shook down on me/ The dust of snow/ From a hemlock tree/ Has given my heart/ A change of mood/ And saved some part/ Of a day I rued."

There it is again. A crow, by being itself, brings grace. That last word has its origin in the Latin word for gift. As, indeed, animals are.

Read about Jim Atwell’s new book, "From Fly Creek _ Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at www.JimAtwell.com.