Little Bent Beak flies with the full moon now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2022; all rights reserved.

She had almost as many lives as a cat, but she's used up the last one now. Little Bent Beak flies with the full moon now.

That wasn't even her name, you know? Her real name was Mica, for the beautiful mica-like shimmer of her tailfeathers. She was one of a group of Americaunas we got in the spring of 2017 (sold as Spanish Aracaunas, but they're all Americaunas, hybrids with Buff Orps, if memory serves). They're known for their marbled golden shades, their absolutely abundant tailfeathers, and their shaggy, puffy little whisker cheeks. Of all of them, Bent Beak had absolutely the best cheeks, and the best tail, too.

When you see chicks for sale? They arrive on Day 1 out of the egg. And if you've ever raised chickens (we have, through several generations' worth over the last decade), you'll know that they have absolutely no concept of relative space or weight or anything else.  They puppy-pile each other in whatever receptacle is holding them at any given moment, and stomp all over each other in the process. Some come up with wry neck; others don't come up at all. Bent Beak came up with a, well, bent beak. Yeah, one of his sibs apparently stomped on the side of her head on Day 1 (and probably never knew it), and it sort of broke the left-side hinge of her beak so that it didn't close properly, the top half of it offset and further to her right than the bottom half. It never caused her any pain, never interfered with her ability to eat or drink. She was fine, just a little . . . lopsided at the front of her face.

Which of course made us love her all the more. She was always a quirky little thing, very independent, mostly fearless. She had a fluttery little squawk, and she also had one that sounded like something out of The Exorcist. And she worked all of it. She was a puppy-dog chicken, one who came running at the sound of her name, and who would come up to the studio door daily waiting to get her favorite snack, dog kibble.

She always got it.

Back in the late summer of 2018, we thought we had lost her. That was the year the feral pups first showed up, and while we had pretty clearly established with them that the chickens were to be left alone, the same could not be said of the half-feral dogs belonging to a neighbor, two of them such skinny Shepards, no more than pups. They showed up one day, and of course, they were hungry, and I was sitting on the couch working when suddenly an absolute tornado of dog fur and something else went rolling past the window like a giant tumbleweed. I had no idea what they had, but when strange dogs show up and they've gotten yours to pack up on something them, it's never good, and literally dropped my laptop and went outside, yelling at the top of my lungs to them to "Get off! GET OFF!!!" The Shepards were so startled they split; ours all shrank away, knowing they were busted, and I saw what was at the bottom of the pile: a chicken. I couldn't tell which one, beyond an Americauna (because of the color), and I couldn't do a thing for her until I got the dogs banished, so the fleeting thought, "It better not be Bent Beak" got shoved out of my mind until I chased all six dogs away. Then I swallowed hard and turned around, expecting to see the worst.

Instead, Zombie Chicken was weaving drunkenly toward me, eyes glassy and ready to tip over at a harsh glare, but alive and walking. Well, sort of walking. And yes, it was Bent Beak.

They had torn all her tailfeathers out. All of them. With enough force to draw blood. But she was alive, self-resurrecting, apparently. We took meticulous care of her over the days and weeks to come, and while she had to deal with a fair amount of pain and unpleasantness in the healing process, within four weeks, she had grown all new quills on her tail. Another meant, and the feathers were growing in. By year's end, she had an even more beautiful, full, abundant, glorious tail than before.

And she became spoiled rotten, of course, except that she was always a sweet girl, always happy to see us, and always so, so happy to be given her kibble and crumble. And she thrived.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

I was sitting here working early one morning, and suddenly a rolling ball of fur and . . . something, in the form of Stormy, Sunny, and some unidentifiable victim went flying past the window. I was off the couch like a shot and outdoors in the freezing cold, no coat, no boots. I was expecting some poor prairie dog that had poked its nose out too early.

Instead, it was Mica.

We don't know what set it off. I suspect it was triggered by the fact that the girls had been sitting in a particular area of the small stall, one where the little monster (that would be Stormy) had decided to start burying her bones. Both pups know the chickens are off-limits . . . but they were both also starved in their first 6 weeks of life, before we were able to bring them home, and when they're starved from birth like that, for some of them, that prey drive never goes away.

Anyway, the dogs have been chastised for it, and confined to the dog run when the chickens are out; the chickens are now confined to the free-range coop when the pups are out. It's notable that Cricket had absolutely no part in this, and he's allowed to run free at all times. But that left an injured chicken. I picked her up and brought her in and checked her over thoroughly; Wings brought in a box and we filled it with straw and food and water and let her stay in it. She was moving just fine, no evidence of pain or injury beyond trauma, and after a day or two, she was ready to get out, so we let her go back to ranging with her sisters and staying in the coop. And within a couple of days, she began to regress. Initially, it was just a limp on the right side, but it was bitterly cold that particular night, with the mercury plunging below zero, so we brought her back indoors. We did the indoor/outdoor thing for a a few days, then wound up letting her stay until it warmed up outside. And then we brought her back out with her sisters.

She was happy to be out again in the fresh air, happy to have her crumble and her kibble and fresh water daily. But she was losing mobility: the foot and leg, then the wing, then more. I've been dealing with these petit dinosaurs enough years now to know what to look for, and she showed no signs of any of it, so what we suspect happened is that a latent muscle injury at the time of the attack turned into a contracture, which in turn created a vascular impingement, cutting off blood flow. And today, I think, her little heart just . . . stopped. She was still getting herself around yesterday. Today, she was barely moving, so Wings set her in the sun where she would be warm, then came and got me. She was responsive to her name, apparently not in any pain, but also clearly very tired, the kind of tired that comes with a body winding itself down. I checked on her hourly, and early this afternoon, I thought she was gone, so I called Wings over, but she was not quite yet: She waited until he got there, gave her little fluttery squawk once more and shook her head, and then she let her little spirit go. 1:40 PM today.

It feels a little ridiculous, writing a eulogy for a chicken, but they're like any other animal: Some of them grab hold of your heart and never let go. That was Little Bent Beak: all spirit and moxie and love. And since chickens aren't really allowed to fly on this plane, I'm just gonna assume that her spirit was one of the shadows across the basically-full moon when I was out there getting photos at moonrise — no gravity to tether her, so now, she can explore the cosmos.

And we both miss her terribly.

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