A fox took my hens final month. “All my fairly chickens … at one fell swoop,” as Macduff says in Macbeth, although, in fact, Macduff is speaking about his precise youngsters, not bantams. They had been very fairly certainly, although, my women.
Weeks later, I’m nonetheless discovering feathers. I cleared the majority of the colorful ones the subsequent day with a leaden coronary heart: 5 piles marking the demise of every of my 5 beloveds. The tiny speckled gang-leader women, Eris and Faustina, shiny goth-black Josephine, broody, petrol-iridescent Stella and stoic beige-bearded Daphne, the flock sentry, normally alert to any menace. Was she caught off guard on a balmy early night, distracted by a worm, or a scrap with a magpie? I attempt to cease speculating, imagining, blaming myself for going out, for not maintaining them secure. However their downy, impossibly comfortable under-feathers have lingered: I discover them snagged on bushes, tumbling throughout the straw-dry grass, gathering in small drifts on the bristles of the doormat. They hold ambushing me.
I shove them in my pocket, then add them to the small handful I’ve placed on my workplace shelf: a tiny shrine for such a bit of grief. I’m mourning what would barely represent the contents of a KFC household feast bucket and with the near-infinite quantity of struggling on the market, it appears self-indulgent to really feel so unhappy. However as any hen keeper, hamster proprietor or budgie lover will let you know, these small our bodies could be receptacles for an enormous quantity of affection. I can nonetheless really feel the load and heat and specific form of every of my hens, all that fluff, their quick chicken hearts beating towards mine.
I shouldn’t get extra hens; it is mindless. The fox is aware of the place the all-you-can-eat buffet is now, so I’ll have to be infinitely extra vigilant. Chicken flu is devastating and has taken the enjoyable out of yard chicken-keeping for a lot of the 12 months. It’s laborious to go away, too, while you’re tied to feathery tyrants. However the silly, sore coronary heart needs what it needs: six extra are coming subsequent week.
Emma Beddington is a contract author
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