Pumpkin, Grounded No More

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

This morning, Wings went outside to feed Miika and let the chickens out of the coop. He was back a few moments later to let me know that we had lost our Red: pumpkin, grounded no more, can fly with Cobalt and her sisters now.

It's not a good photo, but Punkin, as she was also known, somehow managed to evade the camera most of the time. At least here, in this shot from a few years ago, you can see her face. More often, despite being by far the largest of our chickens, she managed to hide herself behind the others save for a flash of rusty red feathers here or there.

When I say "hide," of course, I don't mean it literally; it was more that she was active, always finding something to peck on the ground or pull from the soil, ruining my shot at the very last second. In addition to being the largest, she was also by far the oldest of our girls, and while she wasn't exactly thrilled with being picked up, she would let me do it if I needed to scoop her up and into the coop quickly (for example, on sighting a coyote).

And because she was the oldest, today's developments were not exactly a shock, although even last night she was moving around pretty briskly for an old girl (far better than I am, to be entirely truthful about it). She was, if memory serves, one of our second crop of chickens, born [hatched] on April first or second of 2014. That would put her only days shy of her ninth birthday, and for a chicken? That's ancient. But she was always a tough little girl, still laying up until a couple of years ago. By then, she'd more than earned her rest from all of that. She was not the alpha (that status belongs to the younger and more aggressive Australorp, Jade), but she was also nowhere near the bottom of the flock. Instead, she seemed to occupy her own special space, able to discipline others if she felt the need, and entirely undisciplinable by them. She never abused it; during Cobalt's last weeks, it was Pumpkin who sat with her, side by side or face to face in broody position, just keeping her company. She did the same with Mica [Little Bent-Beak] and others; her advanced age seemed to give her special empathy for those with disabling issues.

For months, now, we've noticed Pumpkin slowing — still lively, just slower. Given her age, none of that was surprising; what was surprising was just how active and engaged she still was. And it appears that she was the same last night, going to sleep as usual and then, in the morning hours, simply not waking up. As ways to depart go, it's about as good as it gets.

But I'm going to miss my big red girl, the Rhode Island Red hybrid who outpaced all the others on size, on age, and for a while, on egg production, too. She was one the sweet girls; chickens can be bullies, but she mostly about caring for the others.

We love you, little Punkin girl. Thank you for years of beautiful eggs, and for taking care of the whole flock. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.          

Cobalt has left us to fly with her sisters.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

I meant to post this last night, but I was so wiped out on every level that I forgot to do it (along with forgetting doses of two different medicines). It was a difficult day by any and every measure, at the end of an equally difficult week . . . in no small part because as of Thursday afternoon, Cobalt has left us to fly with her sisters.

I couldn't find a good image of her by herself, but if you click on the image above, she's the black chicken with white-spotted feathers behind and to the left of the dogs and the tree. It's a shot from August of 2021, when she would've been a little over four years old. She was the last of our silver-laced Wyandottes, a skittish but tough little thing with absolutely magnificent plumage: nominally black and white, but in the sunlight? Silver and intense, deep, iridescent blues, the kind of color that gave her her name, Cobalt, although we mostly called her Cobie for short. [If you've never seen what actual cobalt looks like in its natural state, Wikipedia shows several examples in various stages of refining, and you'll why it suited her so.]

Cobie was independent; she didn't want to be picked up or held, and while she hung with the other girls, she also did her own thing. We have three Australorps, two Americaunas, and one older Rhode Island Red, and she and the Red, Pumpkin, probably felt the greatest affinity for each other, maybe precisely because they were each the last of their kind.

Two weeks ago, I went to put the chickens in for the evening, and after rounding up the other six, I discovered that Cobie was missing. I called and called, to no avail, all while looking around her usual haunts. I finally found her, sitting calmly in broody position on the west side of the open hay barn — not far away at all. But that told me that something was wrong.

She couldn't stand on her right side properly, and at first I thought it was the leg; then she spread the wing for balance and I could see where something had grabbed it — grabbed her, and apparently failed spectacularly when it came to feasting on a chicken dinner, but having inflicted some damage all the same. My first thought was Stormy, because her first weeks of starvation before she came to us have left her a particularly predatory pup, and she has a record already on that score. Thinking back on it, though, I don't think it was her: First, she always behaves with very obvious guilt whenever she's been chasing chickens or wild birds or whatever else catches her attention; and second, Cobie was sitting right out in the open, comfortable and relaxed, with the dogs all running back and forth gong about their doggy business. Cobie was the sort that would have hidden beneath the chicken coop had she had any real fear of the dogs right then.

Which leaves a couple of possibilities: One is that, while our dogs were off woofing over the fence at the neighbor dogs, either the stray dog I sighted on our west boundary about three weeks ago, or, much more likely, a stray coyote, wandered through, grabbed her, and then got scared off. The second possibility is a raptor. The red-tails and we have an unspoken agreement; they never, ever bother our chickens, apparently understanding intuitively that they are family. The harrier, though, shows no such compunction, and she is fierce. I haven't seen her for several weeks, but it's nesting season now, so I have no doubt that she's around. She could easily have grabbed Cobie without getting a firm grip, and dropped her in the process.

At any rate, we initially thought it was just a wing injury, and with no break, we assumed that it would heal. After a week, it became obvious that the real problem as her leg underneath; I had palpated it on the day of the injury, to no visible reaction from her, but presumably some damage at or above the knee joint took some time to manifest. In the meantime, Wings had built her a small straw-bale fort in the coop, and we kept her fed and watered there, with plenty of her beloved mealworm chicken treats, and altough she didn't move around a great deal, she was alert, engaged, and happy.

On Thursday morning, when Wings went into the coop, she was the same: alert, happy, watching his every move, chirping her thanks at him when he gave her her treats, eating them immediately. When I went out about 3:45 that afternoon to put them all back in for the night and feed them, she was gone. It was clear that she had closed her eyes to go to sleep, and while she was asleep, everything just . . . stopped. Which is, I suppose, probably the best possible way to go. But it did tell me that there was something internal going on that we couldn't identify, possibly a talon puncture of an organ or something. The one saving grace is that she had no apparent pain, save when she tried to stand on the injured leg. The vet had planned to come out the day before, but the weather was too bad; My guess is that he couldn't have saved her, but perhaps it was meant to happen this way, with no fear and no trauma from being examined, just being allowed to go to sleep normally . . . and then moving on. Based on body temperature and rigor, my best guess is that her little spirit left for other planes of existence about 2 PM.

Cobie would have been six years old next month; we've learned the hard way that for the "organic" chicks sold locally, that's a pretty long life. [To be clear, I don't think it's that they're "organic" that has made them vulnerable, but more likely, inexperienced breeders.] But for most of those nearly six years, she was a consistent layer, and she was a beautiful bird with a quirky personality all her own. We buried her yesterday morning, with everything she'll need for her journey — including, of course, some of the mealworm treats she loved so much. And yes, she was a chicken, but we miss her.

We love you, little Cobalt girl.  Thank you for all the beautiful brown eggs. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.        

Daphne flew on yesterday.

Photo copyright Aji, 2022; all rights reserved.

We had to begin this day with a burial.

Daphne flew on yesterday, somewhere right around three o'clock in the afternoon. It was right in the middle of a gap in the weather; we weren't supposed to get rain yesterday, according to the forecast, but of course they're always wrong. Anyway, we knew we'd have to wait until this morning to take care of laying her little body to rest, so we did.

She had been slowing down for most of the past week or so. It didn't appear to be anything other than age-related natural causes; she was, like all but one of our now-remaining seven chickens, about five and a half years old. It's not ancient for a chicken, but it seems to be about the average life span of these "organic" local chicks. We honestly thought that Pumpkin, our old lady Red, would be the next to go, since she's about eight and a half (which is getting up there for a chicken), but while she's a little slower these days, she still seems to be going strong.

Daphne was one of a group of Americaunas we got in early 2017. They're a mix of the Spanish Aracauna (pretty much none of which are pure here anymore, although they're advertised that way) and Buff Orpington, I think it is. Apparently the mix makes for an especially hardy egger, and these fluffy golden whiskered girls are some of those that lay the turquoise eggs. Daphne certainly gave us dozens of hers over the years.

For some time, we'd been down to four (out of an initial six of this particular bunch, if memory serves); we lost Mica, A/K/A Little Bent Beak (because her beak was indeed bent, having gotten stepped on by a sibling in her first hours of life outside the egg), back in February, and then, as the saying goes, there were three.

These three were always fairly close, all named for flowers: Daffodil, Dandelion, and Daphne. Of the three, Daphne seemed to be the boss, although even she was subordinate to the real boss chicken, Jade (an Australorp). But Daphne also was a bit of a loner at times, and while she hung with her sibs, she would also regularly be found off by herself a little bit, pecking and scratching. She also dearly loved to lie on the ground by the west bird feeder and eat out of the little house tray Wings bought for the birds (a storm had knocked it off its perch), so from then on, he left it on the ground upright and filled it for her so she could enjoy herself.

Like her sisters, she was named for a little golden flower, but she was also a tough little thing. About three years ago, I noticed that she was limping slightly; she had developed some swelling in her left leg, but she didn't let it stop her. I checked her over thoroughly, of course, and could find no injury, nor any site or source of infection, and a deep dive into Google produced no answers. Whatever small amount of pain it caused her resolved itself in a matter of days and she was back to running at top speed with the others, doing her best to fly out of the gate in the morning, but the change in size remained; it never seemed to bother her, though. She spent her days doing a chicken's favorite things, principally eating, and of course drinking out of the dogs' plastic pool and creating divots in the dirt for her dust baths. 

That photo is from about a year ago — last summer, and she was escaping the heat by lying at the soft, damp base of the aspen (soft and damp because of all of Wings's hard labor watering then; Spirit knows we didn't get any measurable rain). She looked much the same this week, albeit because she apparently knew what we didn't: that her slowing down was going to be of the permanent kind. Each afternoon when I went to put them all back in the free range coop, I had to go looking for her, and each day, I'd find her a little apart from the others, in broody position, but seemingly relaxed and enjoying the cool wet grass, so I didn't think too much about it. I did notice a couple of days ago that the slowing had taken on a different quality, and mentioned briefly that she might be leaving us sooner than we would've thought. I never thought it would be this soon.

I went out yesterday between storms to put them in the coop for the night, and managed to round up seven of the eight. Daphne was missing. I searched her usual haunts, and found right up against the pups' pool, one of those hard plastic kiddie pools they can use to cool off in this ungodly heat. She liked to drink out of it, and apparently had settled herself against it to remain comfortable for whatever time she had left. She appeared to be sleeping, but when I called her name, she opened her eyes and raised her head. I realized then that she probably didn't have long, so I picked her up and carried her to the coop, eventually settling her by the water, and she responded with that little fluttery sound they make, a cross between a chirp and a purr, when they're happy. Wings had walked up, and we talked about what seemed to be occurring, so he leaned down to stroke her feathers also, and we both told her we loved her.

I went out again a little while later to find that she had taken a few steps, settled down in front of the gate, put her head down to go to sleep . . . and did, never waking up. As a way of dying, I supposed it's about as good as it gets, but from the temperature of her body, it was clear that it had happened with minutes of us leaving her earlier.  Apparently she wanted to hang on long enough to say goodbye.

We took her out and wrapped her up and put in her in a safe place so that we could bury her properly, unimpeded by a downpour, this morning. And within moments, Daffodil and Jade and one of her 'lorp sisters came over to the spot where her body had been, confused. Jade was particularly distressed, and let me know it. That, by the way, is unusual; chickens are mostly bloodthirsty and cold-hearted, not given to sentimentality much at all, but they realized that she was gone, and they were mourning.

We laid her to rest early, before the heat had forced its way through the early-morning air. The catmint has been mostly stripped by bees now, but there are plenty of deep violet edges still on the blooms, so Wings cut a large swatch of it to line her resting place. We buried her with everything she'll need, and she'll be on her way to meet up with Bent Beak again. And now there are seven.

We love you, little golden Daphne flower. Thank you for all the beautiful blue eggs you shared with us.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.                                               

It can't possibly be fourteen years for BearGirl, but apparently it is.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

BearGirl in better times.

She was a Newfie, and she lived for the winter; snow was her natural habitat. She was also one of the sweetest balls of fur you could ever hope to meet, and she, along with her sister Hunter, adopted me on sight the very moment I pulled into the driveway for the very first time, a week to the day after Wings and I first met.

It can't possibly be fourteen years for BearGirl, but apparently it is. She left us at 1:12 in the afternoon, on the day of the Feast of San Geronimo. It was our first joint death of one of our four-leggeds, and it tore our hearts out.

It was made worse by the very fact that it was so unnecessary. It was veterinary malpractice that riddled her internal organs with ulcers, and then with tumors, and by the time we realized that anything at all was going on it was the evening of September 5th (another marker, as it happens, albeit not for a dog), and she was merely a bit subdued. Within days, we realized that something was wrong, very wrong; we pulled out all the stops, even took her down to Eldorado, tried everything we could think of, from prayer to corn pollen on the ultrasound cradle to every kind of traditional medicine we could find . . . not knowing that she had fewer than four weeks left.

It broke my heart. the day I first arrived here at the house, she and Hunter were in the north field when I turned into the driveway, and they came bulleting across the field like a pair of puppies, practically hoverboarding over the land. The followed my car up to where I parked and the moment I opened the door, both of these girls, who had never met me, tried to climb into the car on my lap. Hunter managed to wedge herself under my legs on the floorboards; BearGirl was enough older to stand on a little bit of dignity, and she contented herself with sticking her head in my lap and grinning at me.

And that was it. I was theirs, and I was never allowed to leave.

So when she came up suddenly gravely ill in 2007, it was staggering. On the 29th, she went with us on her very last walk around the land; Wings has a photo he shot of me crouched down by both dogs in the hayfield toward the end of it. The next morning, she was not moving much, and then suddenly a blood vessel in one eye burst, and with it, all motor control of her hindquarters disappeared. It was the day of San G, and trying to get the vet out was impossible, but we couldn't move her.

So finally, Wings called Ted, who has been our vet ever since. He was jointly on call with the vet who refused to come despite being on call, and he came. No questions; no reservations; he just came. I held her head in my lap, and Wings bent over her, stroking her beautiful silky coat, whispering to her, and Ted made sure it was painless. When he helped Wings move her, he was wiping tears from his eyes, too.

I promised Wings then and there that I would always care for their spirits, these beautiful beings who gave us the purest kind of love always. And so I took her her cedar and tobacco and water this afternoon, to the place where we scattered her ashes, and despite the howling winds, I was able to give her a little smoke, too. I always feel her there, pain-free, content. And in my mind, she's still running to greet me on that very first day, shoving her head into my lap and smiling at me as if to say, "You belong to us now."

We love you, BearGirl. We'll always belong to you.

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.                                             

Ice: the perfect free spirit, now four years in the wind.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Today is always a terrible day.

Ten-thirty this morning marked the fourth anniversary (four years! how did it get to be four years?) since Ice left us. He didn't want to go. But we had to help him do it, because there was no chance of recovery, and the pain would soon have been unbearable.

He showed up in the general area in December of 2013, having materialized out of precisely nowhere a few days before Christmas. Just before sundown on Christmas Eve, he crossed over onto our side through a downed section of fence . . . and never left. We put the word out, but no one ever claimed him, so he just . . . stayed.

He was my beautiful mustang boy, a high-stepping horse of many names and an indomitable spirit, even when he showed up here, starved, apparently abandoned, even when a hidden case of sand colic tried to take him for us the following spring. The vet took me aside and warned me privately that it was unlikely to have a good outcome; it was a 75+-pound mass, years in the making, and the bowel was already compromised. 

He made a liar out of her. Oh, it took work: days and weeks and months of work, and IV hydration and meds and the endless, endless walking on a lead, circles upon circles in the hot May sun, but we did it. He had a couple of subsequent small episodes, but the vet had also agreed that he might be passing small amounts of sand for the rest of his life. Either way, we were prepared to deal with it, and we did.

And he finally had the herd he'd so obviously always wanted. He was so happy, if still traumatized by his past; gelded, but clearly something had gone terribly wrong, most probably a complete lack of any anaesthetic or subsequent pain relief, and he would not let anyone near his back end. Fortunately, his hind hooves were perpetually short and solid, and even his forehooves didn't need much work. 

I had begun, very, very slowly, putting my jackets on his back just to get him adjusted to the idea of something there. I had intended one day to ride him, this high-stepping warrior boy with the flawless natural gait.

But something else got there first.

The colic recurred on August 3rd or 4th of 2017. The reason for the colic was a tumor that had, unbeknownst to us, already been present when he showed up here and growing all that time. It had finally reached that terrible magic point where it forced a full torsion of the bowel, and there was no return from the compromising of its wall. He was ready to try; he was my tough guy, after all. But it wasn't even a slim chance. The only chance was of prolonged agony for him, and we weren't willing to do that.

So we made the hardest of hard decisions, and my heart tore in half, and it has never healed. He's buried out where Cree, and now Shade, too, are, in the shadow of a field full of wild sunflowers. And I miss him every single day. At 10:30 this morning, I went out there, as I always do, with cedar and tobacco . . . and I put a few of the bright yellow blossoms next to the stone, too.

I don't see him in the flowers so much as I feel him in the wind. He was that kind of horse, Ice: the perfect free spirit, now four years in the wind.

We love you, Ice. You still run across our hearts.

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.                                

Blue, But Shade Is Three Years Gone

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Most of the sky is once again blue, but Shade is three years gone. 

That was her full name, Shade In the Blue, but we mostly just called her Shade. Also Monster, Brat, Butthead, and occasionally, You Bitch, all affectionately if exasperatedly. Shade was a monster, and she loved every minute of it. She'd as soon kick you in the ass as look at you, and to her it was all fun and games, but of the distinctly dominant sort. She was Cree's daughter, and Cree was the only one capable of keeping her in her place.

We loved her anyway.

That up there was her in better days, in March of 2015 to be exact, when the sun was starting to warm the earth again and their winter coats were getting itchy and they spent as much time as possible rolling in the dirt. It would only be another three years that we'd have her with us, although we had no way of knowing it at the time; the local equine cancer cluster hadn't begun claiming lives from our herd yet, but she would become the third in a very quick row.

But on that July day three years ago, we knew. She could barely stand; it took everything she had to follow us out to the field where her resting place would be. The cancer had shot through her system with astonishing rapidity, and only the love between her and Miskwaki, I'm convinced, had kept her going that long. And Miskwaki, having then lost his entire herd, literally wept for her; if you've never heard a horse cry, I hope you never have to do so. It'll tear your heart in two.

A friend helped, because no one whose job it was could be bothered. It was 4:45 PM on that day when we sent her on her journey to join her mother and her beloved Ice in the sky. And this evening, albeit a little late, Wings and I went out to her resting place to give her some cedar and some smoke, some water and tobacco.

I promised him I would always do that for our animals. Sometimes, he does it with me.

But she was in such distress that I prefer to remember her as she was in the photo above: alive and lively, engaged and thoroughly insolent, always getting into trouble or raising hell somehow. I miss her wild indomitable spirit. We love you, Shade. Your fierce and beautiful spirit still lives in our hearts.

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.                                                  

Two years now that Raven's spirit is free.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Two years already. Two years since my personal guard dog left us, taken too soon by the same cancer that took his sister the year before.

The photo is of Raven in his last winter with us, 2018-2019, accompanying me back to the house from a trip up to the gate to lock it for the evening, already ill and tiring easily, yet joyous enough to romp through the snow. Back when we had the gallery, he would wait faithfully every day, and every time I locked up to walk up to the restroom, he would escort me there and back. It took several months, though, to get him home and safe.

Like She-Wolf, who was either half-sister or cousin, but clearly related, he had been abandoned as a pup, left to starve. He learned to fend for himself, but it did metabolic damage. He gained weight; She-Wolf became diabetic and lost it. In his case, he gained enough that it disguised the tumor growing in his abdomen for far too long, until it was too late to do anything about it.

He came by his name honestly. I was still struggling with what to call him, some weeks after he first began visiting us on the daily; we already had one "Wolf," and "Bear" didn't seem right. One day, he was lying on the plank threshold outside the door, paws just on the sill, staring n at me. It was a cloudy, stormy day not unlike today, and when I went to the door, I noticed a raven perched on the skeletal tree outside the low wall of the building. The dog kept looking at the bird, then at me, as though trying to tell me something. I looked at the raven, and it screeched and cawed and cackled, clearly mocking me for my thick-headedness. Finally, after looking between them a few times, I said, "Is your name Raven? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Cue the cackling peals of laughter from the bird, haw-hawing himself nearly off the branch with mirth. Raven looked at the bird, then smiled at me, and crossed his paws with a look of pure self-satisfaction, so Raven he was, forevermore.

He was theirs and they were his, no question. he was wild, still half-feral, and he was always getting into trouble, which usually meant an injury of some sort. Twice he got out onto the highway and got hit, and survived both well enough to hide; in the first case, we found out after coaxing him out from under the deck, and in the second, I was a thousand miles away helping a friend when Wings discovered him, again hiding, and texted me frantic photos before, during, and after a rush to the vet while I, long-distance, begged all the forces and spirits for our brindle boy's life.

And every time, the ravens gathered. He had a few smaller instances, usually from getting into scraps, once or twice from having eaten something he shouldn't, and always, always, the ravens gathered round, hovering, waiting and watching until he was sufficiently recovered to suggest that he was fine; then they'd move on about their business. It was the oddest thing.

So when the tumor developed to the point that it made its presence finally known, every time the ravens appeared (which they began to do with frightening regularity), I began to worry that he would be taken from us. It seems, though, that they were here to watch over him, just as he watched over me all those years ago, to lend their support to help him stay where he so dearly wanted to be just a while longer . . . almost a year, in fact.

By the end of April in 2019, we thought it would be any day. On several occasions, his breathing had already slowed so much as to be unnoticeable, eyes open but sound asleep and perfectly still, and we thought it was done . . . only to have him awaken and smile and wonder with his eyes where the next bone was. By April's end, I had written a piece, submitted but never picked up, that is being published on my Patreon tonight, a sprawling reminiscence built around his last days lying at my feet. He would last exactly three weeks more, twenty-one days.

By the early hours of the morning of May 21st, we knew we had to call our vet. He was not able to come out until after 5, when they closed, and it was a surgery day, so we were lucky to get him at all. I held his upper body in my arms, and as the needle went in, Raven dropped his head against my chest so that he could be as close as possible in that final moment, 5:19 PM by the clock, Wings standing over us with his hands in his fur, and everybody wept.

Everybody.

The vet tech helped Wings settle him in his resting place, and the vet asked to be allowed to throw some dirt in before the closed it up. That's family, so of course the answer's always yes. And just as they shoveled the last bit of earth over and began tamping it into place, there was a flurry of movement just behind the latillas that bound the grave: out of exactly nowhere, a raven, flying straight up from the earth, cackling and laughing, soaring and swooping above us, over and over, until he finally shot westward, laughing all the way.

 When I went out in the wind this evening to take him his cedar and tobacco and water, as I always do, the raven returned to the east field, settling gently down on the ground to watch. As I finished, I heard a flurry of wings, and turned to see the raven soaring past, swooping and circling and cackling before heading back again.

No more pain. Two years now that Raven's spirit is free. I'm glad my guardian comes to visit occasionally still, that he hasn't forgotten us.

Because we love you, Raven. We're glad you're flying free now.

The raven was back today. When I went out 

ll 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.                              

Twelve years gone, and still a thunder-shaped hole in my heart.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Twelve years gone, and still a thunder-shaped hole in my heart.

What does thunder look like? Like that up there. That was his name — well, one of them, anyway. Here, everybody gets nicknames, multiples of them, and the four-leggeds and featherbutts are no exception. His real name was Animikiins, Little Thunder Being, but we called him everything from Thunder to Thumper to Little Dude to Big Man to Little Big Man and more.

He was pint-sized, but a whole personality in a tiny trembly package, and brave enough to back even Raven the bully off with a bark and stare.

He came to us by way of an accident in the village, hit by the bumper of passing SUV and crying in front of the place next to us. The young women there were trying to figure out what to do with him but couldn't take him themselves, and we couldn't get hold of any rescue folks that late in the day, so we did what we had to do and brought him home with us. A quick but thorough examination showed that it was only a graze and all the yelping was from fear, not from pain. But over the next few days, the neurological issues would present themselves, and while we could not get an appointment with the vet between that evening, a Wednesday, and the following Monday, the news would not be good. Distemper. Advanced.

Meanwhile, in the parts of six days that Little Big Man was with us, he wormed his way right into our hearts. He followed us everywhere, talking constantly, head tilted to one side and gazing up at us quizzically about everything. The head tilt and the occasional repetitive thumping of his hind feet were artifacts of the disease, but he seemed entirely unbothered by any of it, just glad to have found a pack to be part of, and to be loved.

And he was loved. I was the one who had to take him on Monday, the one who had to hear what we already knew on some level. The one who had to hold him in my arms on that cold table and watch as he curled into them, gazed up at me, smiled a sweet puppy smile as if to say he knew what was coming and understood and it was okay, and went to sleep before the vet ever showed up with the big needle. The one who soaked his fur with my tears.

I barely made it home with his little body wrapped in a blanket. I wept the whole way. Griffin took months to forgive me. And we buried him in the field to the southwest, not far from where the horses now lie.

I did as I promised long ago that I would always do for our four-legged family members. The time was 10:20 in the morning, and so I took him cedar and tobacco with a little sweetgrass in it and some water. I took the lighter, too, but only the most momentary tiny flame was possible, because just as I started out, the sky opened up, and what had been a steady rain became a torrential downpour. And as I heard myself apologizing to this sweet spirit for the lack of smoke, I realized that he was only living up to his name. Only maybe three months old during those six days, and already a powerful being.

We love you, Animikiins. We're grateful for those few days, and for your presence, in the rain and in our hearts.

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.                           

Three years since She-Wolf left for other worlds.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Impossible that it's been three years already. But it has.

Three years since She-Wolf left for other worlds.

I know that photo looks like she's saying goodbye, but she's not; Wings took that in August of 2015. She'd just stood up after lying in the grass, yawning hugely, and was just checking in with us as she always did.

She-Wolf found us, way back in 2008 when she was still a puppy. She and Raven were cousins, at the very least, perhaps half-siblings, even, and they were both abandoned and starving, and made their way to our gallery door separately from each other. Unbeknownst to each other, we were both feeding them on our respective shifts and allowing them to sleep by the warmth of the fire. And while it would take a few more months for her brother, she came hoe with us on the night before Thanksgiving of that year.

But the damage had been done by her first months of starvation; she had barley survived to find us. And by the time that photo was taken, she had already been diabetic for two full years, a product of that early and deadly neglect, and already she had outlived all the predictions in more ways than one. When she was diagnosed in the fall of 2013, by which time we knew she'd had it for a few months, the vet warned us that her eyesight was already failing, and that she would be "completely blind" within two months at the very outside, probably sooner. But while her vision was somewhat impaired by the time that photo was taken (it's why she tracked us so closely), we were able to save most of it for the better part of four and a half years.

Until the cancer that took her suddenly in 2018. It would turn out to be interstitial carcinoma of the bladder, a sudden-onset, fast-moving, very aggressive kind of cancer in a place that was not really reachable even had surgery been an option, and by the time we found out, it wasn't. Never had been, really, and we actually discovered it pretty quickly, but when they say "sudden-onset," "fast-moving," and "aggressive," they're not understating it in the slightest. But again, our great big wolf girl with the mountain-lion paws defied all the odds. When we took her to the vet in early 2018, her prognosis was clear, and very, very ugly; we were warned she'd be lucky to last three more weeks.

She lasted three more months.

And they were good months; we made damn sure of that. She had everything she needed, everything she wanted, too, and we used an aggressive treatment regimen that, while there was really no chance of it saving her life, in fact kept her very comfortable and happy and even active, and gave her those three months in which to be and do it.

And then on the night of the 26th, the tumor ruptured, as we had been warned it would do. She threw up masses of blood in an instant, and we thought that would be it, but she was not quite ready. We called all over, and no one would come out that night; our own vet wasn't even the one on call, but he did come out first thing the next morning. And at 9:27 AM, as I and the vet tech together held her in our arms (she was a BIG dog), with Wings hanging over us, his hands on her soft fur, she let the vet do his work without protest, and simply, trustingly went to sleep. They helped us lay her to rest amid their own tears, and ours.

And so this morning, I did as I have always promised Wings that I would do and I took her everything she needed to know that we remember her, that the hole in our hearts has made a space in our spirits for hers.

We love you, She-Wolf. Our spirits hold that space for you always.

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.    

Half a decade since Griffin left a hole in our hearts.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021;
all rights reserved.

It's been a terrible day in so many ways today, but the worst is the one that repeats on this day every year. As of 5:00 PM tonight, it's been exactly half a decade since Griffin left a hole in our hearts.

It can't possibly be five years, and yet it is. We were gearing up to build the house, and he was supposed to live in it with us. He was fifteen and a half, after all; we wanted him to age in comfort, instead of that rattletrap RV in which we spent seven long years, and him with us. There's no question, of course, that that toxic tin can shortened all their lives. They all hurt, but this one hurt the most.

Griffin found me; literally saw me, at the shelter, before I could see him, because of the angle of the walkway. He was five months old, abandoned, abused, and supposed to be going elsewhere, but he had other ideas. He seized my heart immediately, and I have yet to understand how he arranged it, but he was always conversant with more powerful spirits, and he made sure everything else fell through so that he could come home with me.

He was the dog of my heart and my spirit, and not just a dog; he thought he was human, and damned if he wasn't. He managed to save my life in very literal terms more than once. He would capture Wings's heart the same way.

He was not a fighter, and yet he was always, always the pack alpha, even as a puppy. Oh, he would fight to protect them, but only for that reason. More often he just . . . laid down the law with a look, and everyone fell into line. And like all good leaders, he needed time to himself, and he would often follow me outside and then find a nice shady spot in the cool grass; at night, he'd do the same on his own. It was always clear that he felt the responsibilities he'd taken on himself weight heavily, and that he needed a little time apart from the other dogs to recharge every now and then.

He was my my baby, and yet not; he was my best friend, and there is not a day that goes by that I don't feel that gigantic hole in my heart. He was always incredibly healthy, until one September day when the then-"puppies," She-Wolf and Raven, decided to escape onto the highway to chase something. Griffin went to round them up and herd them back, and he was the one who got hit. I went flying out of our old house, and he was "running," as much as he could with a fully dislocated right hind leg dragging behind him, one eye bleeding, scanning, scanning, looking for me the whole time; he found me and ran straight to me, and we took him straight to our vet, with Wings's instructions to save him no matter the cost.

It turned out to be mostly superficial, in the sense that torn hip ligaments and a leg that needed resetting in the joint and a blow to the eye that necessitated removal of an inner lid and would cause eventual blindness can be said to be superficial. No damaged organs, no internal bleeding, no broken bones. We were able to bring home the next day, as I recall, and he wore his left hind leg bound up for five weeks and learned to run on three.

There would be other damage, but we didn't know that yet.

After losing Lilith in 2014, he grew withdrawn. He lay apart from the other dogs, the sadness evident on his face. he had long experience with mourning, but we thought maybe her death had hit him harder. And then one day, I called him from a few inches away, and he didn't even twitch an eyebrow.

He couldn't hear me.

It would turn out that he had been steadily going deaf for months, and by then was pretty profoundly deaf, and as his world grew more limited, he was beginning to fear for his daily life with us. The moment I realized it, I tested him enough to confirm it; then I knelt down in front of him, alternated putting my hands over his ears and pointing to my mouth and touching his chest repeatedly, and he visibly relaxed right before my eyes. He had been afraid of what would happen if we knew, or if we didn't know, and once I told him that we would be his ears, he was instantly, as in that very second, back to his old self. We think the impact from the truck that hit him probably hastened it.

It hastened something else, too: Grif developed canine vestibular syndrome. It's terrifying as hell the first time you see it; it looks as though your dog is having either a seizure or a stroke, and of course the first time it happened was one year on Easter Sunday, when our own vet was not on call. So we took him to the other one, and they rehydrated him with fluids subcutaneously and checked him over. I was there for about three hours with him, and we would have to take him back a year or so later for the same problem, but by then we knew how to manage it and we got him through numerous smaller episodes on our own.

Until the last one, in the early weeks of April in 2016. It began the same way, and so we thought that was all it was, and even though he didn't bounce back the same way, we attributed it to age and the vagaries of the weather, which were brutal that year. And then, on the 16th, we had to carry him outside, and he couldn't really stand without help. So Wings brought him in and put him on the couch where he could be next to me. It was better to have him indoors anyway; we had gotten a full foot of snow that morning in one hard, heavy storm . . . snow that had melted almost wholly by noon. And while outside, I saw the Cooper's hawk, who had her own history with us, land in the aspen by where I stood and stare down at me. I thought she was there as a friend; little did I know she was there in her role as guide.

Griffin by then was tired, and we had placed his bed on the floor of the RV's kitchen so that he could stretch out and be comfortable, and still we had no idea of what was coming. Periodically I'd go and sit with him, but not because I expected his spirit to leave anytime soon; I did it merely so he'd know I was there with him, and he always relaxed and breathed more easily as soon as I laid my hand on him. It was a day that I did not help with the outside chores; Wings had told me to stay in with Grif and let him handle it, so I did. He came inside about five minutes to five, went over to greet Griffin and stroke his velvety head and ears, and then sat down beside me.

And then I saw Griffin stretch suddenly, and I knew exactly what it was, and I went running for him to hold him and beg every being I could imagine not to take him from us, but he took only a few more breaths, then rested in my arms and let his spirit go. It was five o'clock on the dot.

And the moment that life force left him and all the remained was the body, with gravity pulling at it now, I felt along his spine what we had not been able to feel while he was alive: a tumor of some sort. It would, given the size and location, probably have been pressing on his heart and lungs and airway by then, and coupled with TBI-induced CVS, it was more than his body could overcome. And it wasn't for lack of watchfuless; I had monitored his whole body regularly after what had happened with the girls, but it was too deep to be felt until he was gone, and up until then, he showed not a single sign that would have sent us to the vet to try to catch it.

Once more, it was too cold, the ground too hard in the fading light to dig, and so we wrapped him gently and laid him in the studio until the following morning. And we both wept like we have never wept for any other being.

At five o'clock, I did as I promised Wings I would always do for all of them: took him water and cedar and tobacco, this time with a little sweetgrass in it. There was no hope of anything more than the faintest tendril of smoke; the wind, mostly lying low all day, had kicked up at five minutes to the hour, and has howled most of the evening since. But I managed a little, plus the rest, and I stood there beneath the big blue spruce with the tears, and the tear, in my soul, and I remembered the spirit who took care of me when no one else would, or even remotely cared, this small sweet spirit who saved my life more than once, and whose absence is as raw today as it was five years ago. Some spirits are more than they appear to be, and he was — is — one.

We love you, Griffin. You're always in our hearts, and our spirits are always with yours.

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.             

Petunia Racing to Catch Poppy Now

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

It's been an incredibly difficult week. I was prepared for dealing with all the pain and fatigue attendant on season, weather, pollen, and vaccine effects; not happy, but expecting it.

I was not prepared to walk out to the chicken coop to find another of our chickens gone. 

It was Petunia this time, like Poppy, one of the three Australorp "flower girls." [These three were clutch-mates and were nearly identical triplets, with low pink combs and pinkish faces, and they were all named for "black" blossoms (which, yes, I know, I know, they're actually purple, but colloquially they're called black): Poppy, Petunia, and Peony. Peony is the only one of the three remaining now, fierce and combative as ever.] She's one of the black chickens in the photo above; if I'm not mistaken, she's the left-most of the two 'lorps to the right of the picnic table and in front of the hay barn, the one facing the camera. 

And, like Poppy, it appears to have been another case of simple heart failure, having quite literally keeled over in the night inside the enclosed space of the inner coop. I doubt she had time to feel anything more than a moment's surprise; her eyes were open, but I suspect that her heart was failing her as she slept, and she had one moment of consciousness, not enough to be afraid or indeed to have any idea what was happening, before it was done. As I said with Poppy, it appears that Australorps are somewhat prone to this problem, and as usual, there were absolutely no signs. She's been running around all week, happy, engaged, delighted to be out in the warmer weather and scratching up a storm.

Where Poppy was a bit of a loner, Petunia was fairly thoroughly bonded to her sister, Peony. But where Peony is a bit of a bully (okay, more than a bit), the other two girls were a little skittish. Petunia was one of those girls who was just happy to be able to do what she liked, run around and scratch in the dirt and find bugs and burrow in for a dust bath. She gave us four years' worth of beautiful brown eggs, medium-sized and perfectly smooth, and all in all, she was just a sweet, shy girl, one whose name suited her.

So already this morning, we've laid her to rest with everything she'll need for her journey. Her body is resting next to Spice's, with Poppy's on Spice's opposite side. But I can see Petunia racing to catch Poppy now: running for all she's worth like a little old lady with her layers of petticoats and skirts hitched up, flapping and squawking all the way. And by now, she's probably already finally learned to take flight.

We love you, Petunia. You'll be flying with your girls in no time.

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.        

A decade since our littlest girl left us.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021;
all rights reserved.

It can't really have been a decade since our littlest girl left us . . . can it?

But I look at the calendar, and it tells me that at 10:42 PM tonight, it'll have been exactly ten years.

Her name was Dom (Domina, for her half-mask; also Dommy, Dommers, Dom-Dom, Grubster Girl, and a few others besides), and she was the biggest combination of fragile feminine girl and wild-ass tomboy you've ever seen. She was also a former bait dog, and she came to me mostly by accident after having been so badly abused that she had permanent slashes (bite marks) in the fur on her forehead and across her little nose, on top of a broken/never healed/badly infected left foreleg.

The shelter that supposedly "rescued" her said they didn't notice anything when they sent her home with the foster who ultimately transferred her to me. Didn't notice the swelling and the blood dripping from it. They played and pleaded ignorance, and I took matters in hand myself and got the infection healed. Not the break, though; that was impossible, because it had been broken at the joint when she was young, never set, healed badly, and the shelter vet had had to rebreak it and fuse the joint. It bothered her when it was cold or damp.

It also bothered her when she didn't want to do something, like go home from the dog park, or go indoors here, and then she would pull that little stunt she's pulling in the photo up there, lift it up as though it pained her so desperately, and shake it as though afflicted by essential tremor, looking pitiful enough to need a tin cup that read "alms for the poor puppy." Until she'd tip over on her ass and scramble up as though there'd never been a thing wrong. Because, of course, there mostly wasn't; she'd run full-tilt with the rest of the pack, always on the lookout for something especially gross and rotten and so, so lovely. Like the time I saw her from a distance, diving repeatedly onto the ground on top of something, and as soon as I called her name, she jumped up, looked at me defiantly, grabbed the thing up in her mouth, and ran off with it where I couldn't catch her.

A rotted snakeskin. Oh, my god, she stank to thigh heaven, and she was so pleased with herself. Now you know why that last nickname.

She was also the kind of dog who forced herself onto your lap and literally refused to accept that anyone could not possibly love her completely . . . and so, of course, everybody did. When I had to be up in Washington for five weeks in 2011, she had taken to riding on the back of the ATV while Wings tooled around here hauling horseshit and doing other work, and he was so taken with the whole thing that she stole what little was still left of his heart.

And then promptly broke it, and mine, too. When I got back in either the last couple of days of March or first couple of days of April, I forget which, everyone seemed fine. A couple of days later, I noticed that she had developed a couple of bumps on her head at the base of her ears. They looked like giant insect bites. More worrying was what materialized within the next couple of days after that. She'd been looking slightly chubby, but she was 11-1/2 by then, as near as anyone could tell (her dentition was so bad when she came to me that my vet said it looked like she was 12, but she was actually about 2-1/2, most likely; that had been 9 years previously), so we hadn't thought much of it. But chubby is one thing; looking pregnant (in a thoroughly long since spayed dog) is something else entirely.

So I took her to our vet here.

The news was grim.

She had a tumor, a massive one, and only the placement of it had kept it from showing. She had shown no signs of anything wrong, either, no loss of appetite, no pain, no fatigue, no discomfort of any sort. But in the space of a couple of days, the tumor had hit that magic growth spurt when no amount of internal organs can hide it. A sale permitted us to pay for an ultrasound, and the worst was confirmed: The cancer had spread through her entire body, and she had weeks at the very most left to be with us. It would turn out to be fewer than two weeks.

The good news was that she was not in pain, and the vet told me that given her comfort levels and lack of pain up to that point, she might have none at all. At the point when everything failed, he said, it would probably be quick. And so I took her home, and relayed the terrible news, and we wept, and then we set about making her as happy and as comfortable as possible.

She lasted about ten days. On the morning of Wednesday, the 13th, Wings gave her a marrow bone all her own, and she was so happy with it. By evening, her body had begun the laborious process of winding itself down, and she was tired and weak, but she wanted very badly to be allowed outside. I went out with her, and she began to walk, slowly, also laboriously, and it became clear that she wanted to see all her favorite places on the land, imprint them in her mind for the journey that was to come. Eventually, she was to tired to continue, so I picked her up and through a haze of tears, I carried her around to all the places where I knew she had loved to play so that she could visit each one one last time. Then we brought her back inside, into that cold tin can of an RV where we had been living for several months and would wind up spending seven years, and set her on a dog bed at our feet with her bone and Griffin, the alpha, nearby to keep watch as he was wont to do.

Sometime before 10 PM, I saw her convulse, and I knew that it had ruptured, as I had been warned it might. I also knew that, at that hour, and in the snowy weather that year, there would be no one able or willing to come and help, that I had to do this myself. And so I got down on the floor and held her on my lap and in my arms, and I felt every twitch and tremor as her body went through all the processes of turning off the switches and turning out the lights. It took about an hour; her vision went early on, and that frightened her, and so I had to make sure that she could feel me and hear me and know that she was safe. I talked to her for forty or fifty minutes, unceasing, and slowly she relaxed, and eventually . . . stopped. Everything . . . stopped.

10:42 PM.

And it was bitterly cold outside, ice and blowing snow, and we would not be able to bury her until the next morning, so we wrapped her up carefully in a soft pink blanket that matched her favorite girly pink dog sweater and pink biker-girl-style studded collar. And we laid her to rest the following day.

And we wept.

To this day, Wings still talks about how she would ride with him on the ATV, this little scaredy-dog who was also a little tough girl, a gangster girl, one who lived entirely up to her pit bull and rat terrier ancestors. She loved to fake being "dumb," but besides being street smart, she understood everything; she just liked to be everyone's baby.

Of that group of dogs, she was the first to go, and the pack felt it intensely. We'd already lost two others in our years together, but we felt it, too. And we still feel her spirit every now and then, this happy, grinning little girl who had everyone wrapped around her little paw. And tonight, five hours early because it's too late and dark and far too cold at 10:42 PM, I took her her cedar and tobacco and water, as we always do for all of ours. Very little smoke, though; the winds have been at gale force most of the day. But she has what she needs, and mostly that's memory, knowing that she still has our hearts.

We love you, Dom. There's always space for you on the ATV, in our hearts, and everywhere else, too.

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.             

Seven years since our Kachina girl left us.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

I've been so busy all day I keep forgetting to sit down to this. But it's been seven years since our Kachina girl left us.

That was her nickname, actually; in this household, everybody gets nicknames, even those with four legs and tails. Her actual name was Lilith, no not because of the silly flowy white-girl New Age stuff, but because I knew the story of Lilith in the Gnostic tradition, and as with her, what happened with this little girl seemed like an escape from bondage of a very real sort.

She came to me by accident, having escaped from whatever, wherever, whomever and fled to the dog park. She was very much not an alpha dog, but because she was a pit, whomever had kept her on a four-foot chain, trapped in her own waste, had been beating her to try to turn her into a fight dog.

She didn't want that life. Unfortunately, a very large amount of damage had already been done by the abuse, and I spent the next thirteen years on desensitization and PTSD management with her. It was a full-time job in and of itself, on top of all my other work.

She didn't trust Wings when I brought her here; he was a man, and she hated men, save for those who got grandfathered under the "safe" clause of her first two weeks with me. Thereafter, certain people were automatically a threat to her newfound safety and that of her pack, in her mind, and men as a class were chief among them.

But she learned, and so did he, never having had to deal with a dog with such issues before, and as was always the case when she finally warmed up, even marginally, to someone, they always felt so honored that she had them wrapped around her paw for life, and he was no different. But by then she knew that she could trust him, and she did. And it was he who nicknamed her Kachina. He also took that photo of her, from, if memory serves, January of 2011: happier times for her, still healthy, no cancer to fight, looking bright-eyed and beautiful in her little bandanna.

We lost her [older] little sister to sudden cancer in April of 2011 (and her brother in April of 2016, as well as another sib in April of 2018; it's a bad month for dogs). Within a month or so, Lilith developed the same signs, and we expected to lose her in June of 2011. But she clearly wanted to fight, even though she was weakened by it, and so we started her on a regimen of intermittent regular doses of prednisone and more traditional medicine (and a lot of prayer and all the love in the world).

And she was with us very nearly three full years more.

By this day in 2014, we knew it was near, had been near for about ten days already. She had already had several miracles, and we knew there would be no more. We were wrong about that, though; we got one more, and so did she. She spent the day before with a giant rawhide bone, unutterably happy and at peace. On the 14th, she slept nearly the whole day through, on the kitchen floor of that crappy old tin can of an RV that we lived in then. And sometime around 2 or 3 PM, her breathing started to get both more even and more shallow, and she slipped into an ever-deeper sleep.

Wings came inside about 4, maybe a little after, to check on her, and her ears shifted slightly when he spoke to her and stroked her head and ears. By then, I was sitting on the floor with her full-time, so that she would have me there when the time came. it came a few minutes later: 4:16 PM, to be exact. And after so much fear in her younger life, so much pain, so many recent years of fighting to stay with us, it was the easiest, most peaceful thing it could possibly be: She took one last breath while lying against me, let it out, and let her spirit go with it. She's at rest with her sibs, under the big blue spruce, and at the appointed time, I did as we always do, taking her cedar and tobacco with a little sweetgrass in it and a little water, too.

Lilith, we love you, sweet warrior girl. You're always in our hearts.

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.            

And now Poppy is running after Spice, headed for the Spirit World.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

It was cold, clear, and early this morning when Wings went outside to feed the animals. When he opened the gate to the chicken coop so the chickens could come to range, he found one of them keeled over by the water bowl, dead. And now Poppy is running after Spice, headed for the Spirit World.

It could have happened very early this morning, in theory, but the sun hadn't been up long and she was in full rigor, so I suspect that it happened just before they settled down to sleep last night. Poppy was one of the five remaining Australorps, a hybrid that originates from, yes, Australia, although they're common here now. They're hardy little girls, great layers of beautiful brown eggs, and often monstrous little bullies. They also have a tendency (not a lot of them, but a statistically not-insignificant amount) to have a heart defect that causes SDS, Sudden Death Syndrome, which is essentially a heart attack, or simple heart failure (or, occasionally, a stroke). And that seems to be what happened here.

In the photo above, which is from the summer of 2018, you can see all the 'lorps scattered around. I'm reasonably sure that Poppy is the one on the right-hand seat of the picnic table. She, Peony, and Petunia have always been impossible to tell apart unless they're next to each other. The other two remaining 'lorps are Jade and Emerald, and they're both a little larger, and have black faces; the three "flower girls" all had light/pinkish faces and lighter, brighter pink combs and wattles.  Oddly, Peony and Petunia have always tended to hang together, but Poppy was a bit of a loner. I wonder now if it was simply that she always had a little more trouble keeping up. Chickens tend not to show health problems unless and until they're in real distress, and she ran around with the rest of them, so it never occurred to me to notice whether she was maybe a little slower than the others; we never had reason to suspect that she had a heart arrhythmia. 

The saving grace is that it was clearly instantaneous; she would have felt no pain, probably not had time to feel a single thing at all. But the girls are a little rattled, losing two of their own in three days. They're all out ranging now, and it's keeping them occupied.

And at eight o'clock this morning, without benefit of coffee or pain meds, either one, we were out in the bitter cold, laying Poppy to rest with everything she needed. She and Spice have probably already found each other, which will make it easier for both of them. And now we have two new chicken-sized holes in our hearts.

We love you, Poppy. You'll finally be able to fly.

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.       

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.

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