I inherited Red from departing neighbors. She had been rescued from a commercial hatchery and came with a snipped beak. She was the smartest of them all. In the early days I borrowed her and some of her companions to help prepare the vegetable growing area and she would hover close to my digging implements to examine and gulp down whatever edibles I unearthed – whilst the other chicken stayed as far away from me as possible. And when she and the others were given to me, it was Red who first identified the presence of a young rooster (Buffy) in my second flock, as I wrote in September 2011:
“she paces the fenceline and he saunters closer
though pretext is food, a purposeful loiter,
he faces and tip toes, his chest full of swagger
she responds just as quickly with unrestrained vigor
and then he departs and she wistfully eyes
the untutored young rooster and if she could,
sighs,
but tomorrow will come and who knows by then
Buffy be back and gladden the hen”
She had been ailing for some time and seemed to recover after I administered some antibiotics and gave her a spa bath with epsom salts. But the past week was tough and she got weaker and weaker and today she was gone.
What to do with the body? I remember when I was caring for my neighbors’ chicken while they were away and one died and I buried it. When I told them they were incredulous so, not understanding their response, I asked if they would have liked me to freeze the body for their later digestion, which provoked a similar response. So I asked what they did with their chicken and they said they tossed them into the garbage bag, which to me is wasteful of recyclable nutrients and somewhat discourteous of a loyal retainer. In fairness I should mention that my neighbors used to slaughter, process and eat healthy chicken, they drew the line with a chicken dying of unknown causes.
A number of chicken have died over the past 2 years and I have an area where I buried them side by side under biggish stones to deter scavengers. But I decided today that Red would be better honored if she were buried amongst my fruit trees – perhaps I am thinking of a tradition where a dead fish was buried at the bottom of a hole dug for new fruit trees.
So she has moved on but her remains will contribute to the soil and its inhabitants, the small fig tree and to the fruit it will bear one day.