Spice is finally able to fly on the other side now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

I said goodnight to her about 4 PM. I just went out and checked on her at about 7:00, and Spice is finally able to fly on the other side now.

She was one of the crop of 2014 chickens, born in April of that year, which means that she just missed turning seven. That's a ripe old age for a chicken, and she and her fellow Rhode Island Red, Pumpkin, had outlived all the others of their cohort. Pumpkin is still with us, going strong, but Spice began to deteriorate a couple of weeks ago. After this many years, I know the signs, and I warned Wings that it wouldn't be long. And in truth, she lasted far longer than I expected; I had thought we would lose her within a couple of days of letting him know, and by last Friday night, I was sure she wouldn't make it to dawn on Saturday. Bt she was here Saturday, so we moved her into the studio in her own little space by the heater, and she stayed for five extra days.

Honestly, I had expected Pumpkin to be the first of the two to go; she is outsized for a hen, and I expected that to give her trouble in old age (and they are old ladies by now). Besides, Spice seemed to have nine lives, at the very least, and somehow she seemed invincible. Well, until a year or two ago, when she became egg-bound. It was a problem we had frequently with her cohort, and not all of them survived it. They were advertised as "organic chicks," but the fact of the matter is that, as we would learn, a lot of those kinds of chicks are raised by breeders brand new to the process, and not always bred well. The other chicks turned out to be far stronger and sturdier than this crop, and th egg-binding issue was only one of several. Regardless, we managed to save her at the time, but we knew then that it was unlikely she would lay any longer. Which was fine; she had more than earned her retirement by then, having given us some five or six years of beautiful brown eggs. [The Reds are prolific layers.]

But Spice had spent part of her younger years at the bottom of the pecking order, so to speak. Back in 2015, I think it was, she was targeted by Saffron, one of the yellows (yellow sex-links, which, like black sex-link chicks, are bred specifically for line-sorting by color at hatching; it's a commercial thing intended to save time and therefore make money, which meant nothing to us, but that's how they're identified). Saffron, like Spice, was a smallish hen, and like a lot of creatures made vulnerable by size or circumstance, decided that bullying another small hen was the way to go. It became so bad that we finally had to pull Spice out of the coop and set her up in the giant dog crate by herself just to keep her safe and allow her a chance to eat and drink water. She thrived, but she remained a skittish girl, naturally, I suppose. it was warm weather, so we kept the crate in the hay barn, and covered it with a heavy tarp at night so she could sleep, unmolested by either light or other creatures, and pulled the tarp off early every morning.

That summer, after dropping and baling the hay, some of the guys stacked it in the hay barn behind her crate.

They did a shit job.

And one morning, I came out to feed and water her and let her out to range, and just as I walked out, I heard some ominous heavy sound, and several hundred pounds' worth of bales came tumbling down, grazing me and smashing right onto the crate.

With her in it.

And in the giant puff of hay dust, I heard indignant squawking, and she shot upward and out of a break in the bars as the thing collapsed inward around her.

Nine lives, indeed. When I pulled the bales off, the gigantic Dane crate was a twisted mess of metal, folded in upon itself, not a square inch available to hold a chicken.  [To be clear, what happened is that when the force of the first bales hit, it literally BROKE the crate and some of the bars popped open. Spice had enough presence of mind to fly, yes, FLY, up and out of that tiny hole just in the millisecond available to her to survive.]

So, for a chicken, she had a rather exciting life. She also became a bit of a bully in her turn, but we worked on that. [Saffron? Oh, Karma got poor Saffron. She vanished into thin air one evening, and whatever got her left four discrete piles of feathers of various places on the land, so that we would know, apparently.]

Anyway, we've known this was coming for a couple of weeks. She has not been in pain; her body's simply been slowly winding itself down, as old age is wont to do. And rather than let her go fast by freezing to death, we elected (of course) to keep her comfortable and warm and safe so that she could go at her own pace. Wings kept me updated throughout the day, saying that her breathing was really shallow and she was clearly mostly asleep, but still apparently unwilling to let go. So at 4:00, just before I came in for the evening, I went to check on her. At first, I wasn't sure she was still with us, but she was breathing, slowly and steadily, if shallowly. I stroked her back and told her I loved her, and she responded to my voice by lifting her wings as best she could, taking a deep breath, and then settling back down to breathe more regularly. It wasn't a death rattle, but I knew it was close. I patted her once more, made sure she was warm, and said goodnight.

And at 7PM, when I went out to check, she was gone. Based on the rigor, probably within five to fifteen minutes of my leaving her before. She never awakened; her response to my voice was not even fully conscious. But I think she wanted to say goodbye before flying to the other side.

And now I'm sitting here bawling over a chicken, with a hole in my heart.

We love you, our feisty little Spice Girl.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.