Clover decided she's ready to fly.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

Things are a zoo here this week: all the work to be done on house fixes and weatherization, plus multiple medical appointments. Yesterday afternoon was Wings's appointment for his knees (more about that later). For the moment, the upshot is that, before we left for said appointment, we needed to put the chickens back in their coop. I got all but one of the two remaining silvers inside, but when I went to look for her, I couldn't find her anywhere.

I noticed that several of the chickens had crowded in between and around the straw bales across from the coop itself (they have an actual wooden coop inside a walled and roofed structure that used to be the hay barn, with an opening to a large area in the back fenced with ProPanel and chicken wire, so that when the weather's bad or we're going to be gone and can't let them have the run of the whole place for safety's sake, at least they still have free-range space at all times). At any rate, the half-dozen or so across from the coop were raising hell, and since we found a dead magpie in that spot a few days ago, I thought I better double-check. 

Clover was not among the straw bales. However, I turned to look beneath the coop, and she was under the farthest (north) corner. They sometimes lay eggs in that spot, so I assumed she was there for that purpose, but went to check anyway — and found that instead, Clover decided she's ready to fly.

We didn't have time to do anything yesterday and got home from the appointment too late to do anything, either. Fortunately, it's cold at night, and she'd chosen the shadiest corner of the coop. Given the magpie's fate, we were a little concerned that something might have gotten her, but this morning, looking at her little body, it seemed fairly obvious that she'd just . . . gone to sleep. 

That's her up in the middle of the photo, the raggedy little black and white (a silver-laced Wyandotte, to be precise; she was named for the prairie clover found growing wild here, whose petals her white spots resembled). Last year's drought affected the chickens' molt cycles profoundly; some molted in early summer, some at their more usual time in the fall, some not at all . . . and some, like Clover, molted early last year and then didn't get their feathers back until this year. Clover, however, never got her new ones in at all. It didn't affect her any, other than cosmetically; she was one of the most active of the chicks, always on the run in pursuit of crumble or scratch or bugs or seed or kibble or her beloved suet over by the bird feeder. Her molt did make her a bit more skittish than usual, but she was always a spooky little girl, if an otherwise happy and always healthy one. there was no sign of any health issue at all; she continued to lay, continued to remain as active as always. But these are organic chicks bred locally, and we've noticed that they don't have the hardiness of those bred on the more established farms that don't advertise themselves as "organic." Their lifespans tend to be two to three years shorter on average, and I'm guessing that's what happened here: She felt a little odd, returned to the coop and went to hide in their communal "safe space," went to sleep, and her little heart just . . . stopped. No sign of trauma or pain; everything apparently peaceful.

And so we buried her this morning, with everything she needs for her journey. While her spirit travels to worlds where her sisters wait, and the dogs and horses, too, her body rests on the west side, where some of the others are buried, near a dwarf blue spruce we planted to honor a warrior and friend who walked on some years ago. That spruce is a lush, deep blue-green now. 

And now, her surviving sisters' numbers are reduced to fourteen; only one of the silvers remains. We'll miss her beautiful brown eggs, small and slightly roundish and filled with flavor. Most of all, though, we'll miss our little raggedy girl, always happy, always on the run. We love you, Clover.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.