Fiacré's spade: Attrition

Spot is missing and presumed dead. I didn’t think too much about the feathers I saw by the road when I checked the mail yesterday. Road kill, perhaps, or a hawk getting one of the wild birds. Later, though, Terry asked, “Have you seen Spot today?”

Feathers by the mailbox

I went to the coop and counted. Seven. She was gone. I went back to the mailbox and realized that the feathers were too large for a mourning dove or pigeon. I walked the ditch looking for clues and soon found indisputable evidence that the feathers belonged to Spot.

Definitely one of Spot's feathers

It wasn’t a surprise. Like many youngsters, Spot wanted to be free, even at the expense of her safety. It’s not a good trait in a chicken. Terry explained to her more than once that it was dangerous. She got out of the run two or three times a day. We never saw how, but it doesn’t seem very likely that she flew. I had her right wing’s flight feathers clipped right down to the nubbies. We use “clipped her wings” as a metaphor for restricting freedom, but from what I’ve read, the idea is to clip only one wing, leaving the bird unbalanced and thus flightless. I think she ran at the netting around the run and managed to get up high enough to slip through the larger openings toward the top. She was a slender chicken. She could have gotten in the same way, had she been sufficiently motivated.

Spot, left, with Silvia on top of the coop last summer. Always an adventurer.

We knew if she kept it up, she would come to no good end. When she first escaped, she would run around the outside of the fence. If we didn’t come right away to open the gate and shoo her back in, she started wandering. I watched from the kitchen window as she explored the closest raised bed, then the next one out, working toward the high tunnel. I went out then to retrieve her, not wanted her to get too far afield.

Since we got the automated coop door, I got out of the habit of taking attendance every night when the girls went to roost. Spot must have wandered off; we would have seen her if she’d been circling the fence. Sometime in the night she was either hit by a car of carried off by a predator, probably the later, as we couldn’t find the body. Those of us old enough to remember Janice Joplin know that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, and so it is with Spot. She is free from all worldly cares. The worst part is that Spot was an Ameraucana, and I am now down to only two blue-egg layers to 5 brown-egg layers. I will be limited in making up a lovely assortment of alternating colors. I also didn’t order enough extra chicks for this spring. Man.

In other news, the weather yesterday was beautiful, sunny and 70°F. I went for a walk. The pussy willow was not only blooming but buzzing with bees. I thought they were honeybees. Terry checked it out later and said they were too small. Whatever species they were, they were stuffing pollen into their leg baskets like there was no tomorrow.

A bee collecting willow pollen

By the creek, the scilla were starting to bloom. I think the purplish leaves to the right of the scilla might be bluebells.

Scilla blooming, possibly bluebell coming up on the right

The rhubarb is also coming up. Everything seems early this year. I hope there will not be too much damage when we get snow on Monday. Or maybe the forecast is wrong.