APRIL 2023

Omen (noun): prophetic significance

Omens have always been my one indulgence in superstition. On a daily basis I find myself reflecting on something that occurred recently to find connection. “This happened so that happened” tends to be my way of making sense of life’s happenstances. Or, “this was trying to tell me something.”

Yesterday the four of us Steve, Matt, Jadzia & I piled into my Honda for a trip into town. It was a dark, damp day. I had lost track of time prepping for the farmer’s market so dinner never got made. We took a family trip to a local farm store and picked up pizza. I took Jadzia over to peek over the metal tubs and look at the baby chicks. Some huddled by the heat lamp, others seemed to have fallen asleep right where they were standing. I noticed one had a blocked vent that needed attention soon. I alerted a staff member who said they knew how to take care of it and reassured me everything was fine. They never asked which chick it was.

As someone who worked in retail many years I backed down, not wanting to step on toes. I knew the frantic stress of trying to answer phone calls, keep stock, check people out, amongst numerous other tasks. A mass produced baby chick from a hatchery far away getting sick was never going to be a top priority. I understood and knew it was nobody’s fault besides the system that creates this haphazard environment for animals. Millions are hatched, shipped off to stores, cared for by understaffed, underpaid, overworked retail employees with no animal care experience, and no one bats an eye if a chick doesn’t make it.

I left the store wondering how I could make better choices in purchasing baby chicks in the future. How can I attempt to subvert the mass production industry in yet another area of my life? I already buy used toys, clothing, homegoods, etc. I do my best to grow our own food as much as possible. I try to cook from scratch everyday for every meal. It seems that the time and country I am living in is constantly asking me to make better choices or be an enabler, to look the other way. It’s never that simple or easy to do. It took me over a decade to accept that reusable grocery bags were going to much better use in our home than at the store (after being a cashier and watching cashiers awkwardly clunk items into bags made from plastic waterbottles that kept collapsing and sliding as the line of sighing customers piled up behind me and the cashier was adorned with a crown of sweat beads).

I knew the best way to avoid being a consumer was to “make my own.” In this particular area, it meant hatching our own eggs. Which naturally means having a rooster. Our first four chickens on our farm were unsexed, two became hens and the other two roosters. Randy, the more stereotypical chicken, was territorial, feisty, and loud. One day I was out in the yard about to walk back into the house. Naturally, wearing an outfit really not cut out for farm chores: a tank top, linen pants, and birkenstock sandals. I heard a pitter patter mixing in with the sound of my sandals crunching sand. It grew quicker and closer and as I spun around saw Randy make a running leap at me. As a large, awkward person the adrenaline overcame me. I heavily jumped to the side and flailed my arms and made a very cartoon sounding “ehh-uhh!” as I tried to get my wits about me. Randy lunged at me again, talons out, red wings flapping wildly. Perhaps it was a kind ancestor who skillfully outran “real” predators taking mercy on me, perhaps it was my brief stint in 5th grade soccer, perhaps it was the ease of my breezy linen pants– but I somehow managed to roundhouse Randy successfully and send him flying. Birkenstock to beak. Randy eventually became a bowl of soup and my first lesson in butchering an animal.

Since that day 4 years ago many chickens have come and gone from our farm by disease, hungry kestrel, late night out, over excited dog. Our year old Ameraucana chickens have taken to sleeping in the trees outside their coop on warm summer nights. We made several attempts to deter them, such as keeping them locked in their coop & run for several days, making their coop extra inviting with treats and new straw, even knocking them down with sticks. Unfortunately we are not always successful and Matt will return home from work in the morning to find one dew soaked chicken anxiously trying to peck her way through the hardware cloth back into the run.

Today Matt found our dog, Yushi, harassing a chicken under a brush pile who was clucking in pain. She was soaking wet and her backside completely ripped up. She was up and walking but infection would soon set in. There was no choice but to take preventative mercy on her and end her life. I was able to corner her in the coop and carefully wrap her in a bath towel. It is amazing how heavy something feels, how many organs and cells and systems materialize to make a living being, when you know they are about to stop. It felt like I was carrying an enormous heart covered in feathers. I felt her relax in the warmth and suppression of the textured cotton. As I carried her out back I felt the urge to put her head on my shoulder and squeeze her in my arms in just the way that I carry Jadzia to bed. Her wet feathers, her blood, her chicken germs suddenly did not matter. I just wanted to hold her close and lay her to rest.

In the past Matt has shot our chickens to end their lives. I was ready for it to be my turn. I wanted to try the traditional method of ringing the neck. I remembered a documentary I had watched years ago about a family in Appalachia. Trapped somewhere in time between canning beans and drinking Mountain Dew. Living in the multigenerations of quilting and texting on a hillside. I thought of the grandmother, the matriarch and her wiry arms. Her hair pinned back and flying away at her ears. Her glasses, apron, dress, her confidence. Even with her tiny, knotted wrists she was able to kill a chicken in seconds flat. I am a big person and felt I could muster enough strength to make for a quick death. I wore thick leather gloves to avoid feeling the neck snap right under my bare skin. It didn’t matter and I felt it anyway. It wasn’t enough. I swung again. And again. I filled with panic and dread as I watched the chicken open its eyes, still breathing. I laid it down on the ground, held it’s head, and fired the revolver into her head. I had only ever fired a gun once before at a shooting range four years ago. It’s amazing how little you realize what you’re doing when it’s an emergency. The gun felt like a pop gun. I even wondered if there had actually been a bullet at all. Smoke rose up out of her head.

Today I learned chickens really do run around after you cut off their head. However, in my moment of panic and dread, I had forgotten this and thought the chicken was still alive. I fired into her head over and over again asking “why won’t you die?? why won’t you die??” Suddenly the dark clouds opened up and small hail began pelting us. I could hear the tiny plunks bouncing off my anorak, the compost bin, the chicken’s feathers. Her wings flailed and she flopped up into the air and all around. Eventually Matt pinned her down and slit her throat. Finally, it was over.

As I buried her I told Matt that chicken’s name is Rasputin. She simply just would not die. At least to us, in reality she had died several minutes before we came to our senses. We walked back towards the house, hail pouring down. Steve, Matt’s father, stood in the door of the garage holding Jadzia, sheltered from the weather. I walked to the driveway and waved. Jadzia smiled, wriggled out from grandpa’s arms and came trotting towards me. I felt so relieved to see the flush and glow of life. I thought about how Jadzia had been on the “other side” more recently than anyone in the house. I wonder if babies and toddlers still have connections back there and if she wished the chicken well on her way back out.

Damp and tired we stomped back into the house, stripped our wet blood covered gear off, and Matt threw logs in the wood stove. Jadzia trotted around thrilled to have all of us near her again. I sat in our old torn up chair, thinking about how calm I felt. I thought about how much I had changed in the past four years since moving here. I told Matt it wasn’t my first rodeo anymore, that five years ago that chicken’s chaotic death would’ve destroyed me. The first animal I ever had to kill was an enormous mole our dog had tortured ripping in and out of the ground for hours. I told him I was sorry and I cried. Since then so many birds, squirrels, rabbits, chickens, moles, voles, deer, insects, mice, plants have come and gone. Jadzia’s unusually complicated birth the hardest of them all. I wondered if I had grown callous. I thought recently of the book I had finished, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, where she talked about her pack rubbing her skin so raw it eventually became this tough red chicken skin.

But I don’t think so. I think I am just prepared to live out here. We came to be closer to nature. We came with all the weapons in our hearts and minds to think and act quickly to keep up with the natural world. It is almost always outrunning us as we jog along behind with our leather gloves, rain boots, and revolvers. I was calm not because I was calloused but because I had reached a level of acceptance. That everyday on this farm I must wake up and be prepared to answer the call of the wild.