At about midnight last night I heard what I thought was a cat fight in the garden. I wandered through the house and discovered W stood at the patio doors, shielding the light of the room from the sides of her face with her hands.
“You forgot to shut the chickens in - there’s feathers everywhere”
I grabbed my bike light, threw my wellies on, and ran out into the darkness. There really were feathers everywhere. Pale gray ones. Dotty’s feathers. Dotty had been given to us last spring by a family moving away from the area. She was smaller than the rest of the chickens, and had survived an attack by a cat last summer that saw one of the other chickens killed. Although she was the smallest, she was the most aggressive of all the chickens - unlike “Henny” who presumed every human on the planet was her best friend.
We found Dotty crouched under a bush halfway up the garden. I picked her up, and handed her to W to take indoors in the warm. She didn’t appear to have any injuries, but something was odd - she was letting me pick her up. That never happens.
While searching the boundary of the garden for Henny (large Rode Island Red / Star), we discovered a trail of feathers leading into the brambles. Suddenly she burst out of the hedgerow a few feet further along and sprinted out across the garden - running flat out in the dark into the children’s climbing frame. As she neared the house she slowed to a walk, and apparently recognised my voice - I’m pretty much the only person they know; I let them out on the way to work on a morning, and shut them in when I get home.
I handed her to W, and we headed indoors to keep them in overnight. I went to the loft to fetch the cat boxes down, and filled them with hay. By the time I arrived back in the kitchen it was obvious Dotty was in trouble… given that she was already the most nervous of the chickens, the escape from the cat had obviously been too much for her. I’m guessing we witnessed her final moments in the kitchen there and then as her heart gave out.
While putting the Rode Island Red in the cat box, W realised she had blood on her hands. It wasn’t until this morning that we realised the extent of her injuries; she had torn a fairly big gash in her chest - probably during the dive into the brambles. She seemed happy enough though, and had survived the night in the cat box.
What to do?
“Is the farm open in the morning?”
W seemed to think so, so after buying groceries this morning we drove over to “Crofters Farm”, and the children got to pick new chickens. We are back to having four chickens again.
The most difficult question to answer when I broke the news to the children this morning came from our youngest…
“Where did you put Dotty Dad?”
“She died. She’s gone to chicken heaven. We’re going to get more chickens today though”
“Yay
How could I possibly tell her I threw Dotty in the recycling bin at the front of the house?
I guess if one positive can be taken from us losing the occasional chicken to either cats, or foxes, is that the children are growing up with a clear sense that animals don’t live forever. They also have no problem rationalising that the chicken they so often eat in a roast dinner is the same as the ones they have named in the back garden. I regularly ask if I can cook “their” chicken, and they grin while telling me no, because it’s “their” chicken.
They have no answer when I ask if they are going to eat “their” chicken.