Pearl follows Cinnamon.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

Pearl follows Cinnamon to the Spirit World. As of about 9:30 this morning, so our day began with a burial.

Somewhere I have a photo of her as an adult, but I can't find it now. In this one, I think she might be the one in the feed dish on the right, the little silver next to the Americauna her right; viewer's left).

At any rate, this one is down to the dogs. This house is so soundproof that I can't hear anything if there's a ruckus outside, not even with the kitchen window cracked. It wasn't wide open because it got down into the forties last night.) But just after 9:30, I went into the kitchen to make Wings some toast, and I saw Coyote walking next to the aspens, Crow lying a few feet away. And a few feet from both of them, beneath the center of the aspen stand, was a little black lump. I went tearing outside, but of course, the deed was done. 

Last week, the day after we lost Cinnamon, Pearl came up lame, unable to put weight on her left foot. It was apparently either a sprain or a deep bruise; I could find no tangible injury, and she let me manipulate both foot and leg. That morning, they had all come flying out of the coop at top speed, and they sometimes land on top of each other (since chickens can only "fly" for a few seconds at a time a foot or two off the ground). They also drink out of the birdbath and then hop down, and some are less graceful than others about it. We think she injured the foot at one point or the other. At any rate, the foot was healing; she was back to putting most of her weight on it. But the Trickster Twins are smart enough to spot a vulnerability, and I'm sure it slowed her down enough thst she couldn't get away.

I'm just sick about it. Also furious that these dogs were starved so horribly the first few months of their lives that their prey drive is now so deeply imprinted that we can't undo it. Oh, we can try, and we do, and we discipline them for stalking the wild birds, as well, but when a dog is left literally to starve to death and its only solution is to hunt birds, well, no matter how well fed they are now, at some level, that's never going to be undone.

And Pearl paid for that.

I'm heartsick, and guilty, and angry at myself, but I'm way beyond enraged at the people who damned these dogs to starvation in the first place. And I mourn this little silver girl, a Silver-Laced Wyandotte with the great round white "pearls" on her feathers and back that gave her her name. The one consolation is that it was quick and immediate; her neck was broken. And given that, there is just the slightest possibility that it was the harrier, who Blue chased off yesterday and who has been hanging around again, probably looking for easy meals in this drought. But we know it's not likely. So we're back to segregating the two and the chickens again.

Meanwhile, my little black and white girl, the one whose neck feathers had turned yellow because she got into a broken egg and got the yolk all over herself, is gone, following Cinnamon to where all the others are, chickens, dogs, horse, wild birds. And I miss her skittish, indignant little personality already.

Fly home, Pearl.  We love you, little girl.



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