Joy and Sadness

In between getting my blog posts from Belize done, we had a nice Christmas Observed with my brother and sister-in-law and a good ham dinner with a few friends on Christmas Day. Mom, Dad, Terry, and I had champagne, shrimp cocktail, cheese fondue, and deviled eggs for New Year’s Eve—and were in bed by 9:00. It was midnight somewhere. I made caramel rolls for breakfast on New Year’s Day. In a surprising breech of protocol, I actually stayed awake through the entire broadcast of the Rose Parade. Pat, Nancy, and Jane came for dinner and games later on. Nancy made a wonderful chicken pot pie with biscuits on the top. We were treated to a spectacular sunset that spread over the whole sky.

Fantastic sunset on New Year's Day

Just before the guests arrived on Friday afternoon, I got a call from Diane to arrange lunch on Saturday. That too was a nice visit, and the last get-together of the holiday season.

Sadly, yesterday morning Hilda saw that Kirsty, one of the Buff Orpingtons, was hunched, fluffed up, and lethargic in the coop. After Diane left, I went out to check on her. She was perched at the edge of one of the nest boxes. There was something that looked vaguely like egg white in the nest box and a puddle of cloudy fluid on the floor underneath it in the storage side of the coop. I cleaned the floor first. When I went into the chickens’ side to wipe out the nest box, Kirsty was on the floor, but it was impossible to tell if she had fallen or jumped. She was too weak to fold her wing to the side of her body.

I resolved to move her to the garage so she could at least be warmer in her last hours. By the time I got an old towel to wrap her in and a box fixed up with wood chips, she had died. At least she didn’t suffer long. Terry took her back to the trees and left her for the coyotes. The ground was too hard to dig a grave.

Kirsty before she took ill

This is the third chicken that was have lost to some kind of illness. We learned from the first two that it is pointless to try to intervene. We have learned not to worry that the illness will spread to the rest of the flock. We haven’t learned how to not be sad.