Last year, I mentioned that we had a suicidal chicken. One of the new chickens recently began to join the suicidal one on her forays outside the fence. We hadn't clipped the wings of the new ones and one red chook (she was smaller and lighter than her sisters) was taking advantage of that and jumping over the fence to forage in the woods and the rest of our yard. She was taking her life in her own wings, and we never got around to stopping her by clipping her wing.
In fact, this was a video I took of her when she forgot how to get back in the yard. I take food out to the girls at night when I close up their coop, and she would get excited to get the food and couldn't remember how to get back inside so I would need to coax her back in.
Alas, last night, when Seth and the boys went out to put the chickens away, they found her just outside the fence, unmoving (i.e., she was dead). We don't know what happened to her. She didn't have any obvious signs of trauma on her and there were no signs around her that she had been attacked. She hadn't been acting sick lately, either.
Unlike, say, this black one.
Notice that her tail feathers are down -- not up like the other chickens' feathers. She didn't have much energy and eventually we found her dead in the coop a few weeks ago.
The red one that is recently deceased, however, had not been acting that way. Her demise was a surprise and a shock to the boys, who were sad.
Since Seth was home at the time, he determined to bury her. Call me heartless and cruel (or maybe lazy), but I don't take such care when I find dead chickens -- I toss them over the fence into the neighbor's yard (the house has been foreclosed on and no one lives there any more).
At any rate, the boys were sad as they helped Seth turn her into garden fertilizer (we like to recycle as much as possible in the Holler).
Kieran said the eulogy for the chicken, "I want to remember all the good times we had together." (Those mainly consisted of him watching the chickens wander around the yard.)
And Cael placed a rock and some flowers over her final resting place.
As they mourned the loss of another chicken, I let them be sad for a bit. In a way, I want them to feel the weight of what our sin (in a general sense) has brought about. We talked, again, about the reason chickens die -- because Adam and Eve sinned and we are living under the curse God placed on His creation as a result of that sin. That the God-decreed punishment for sin is death and that sin has affected the entire creation (Romans 8). And that our hope of salvation from death and eternal separation from God comes through repentance and faith in Jesus, what He did on the cross on our behalf, and His resurrection. And that we look forward to a new heaven and earth, when the curse will be no more and we will be able to enjoy God (and, most likely, chickens) forever.
Somehow, this little guy has turned into a big eight-year-old (he turned seven just the other day). It was just earlier this year that, when he learned he would be turning eight, said, "WHAT?!? But I don't want to!" Since then, he has embraced his eight years post-womb and happily tells people his age.
He enjoys playing DJ with the various CDs we have and our CD player. He also enjoys finding a song he likes and setting it to play on repeat.
He loves attending our local elementary school (we enrolled him this school year) and being around all the friends. He's learning to read and is continuing to figure out math and numbers.
For his birthday party, we had the traditional peanut butter pie (with a manufactured "8" topper)--one of his favorite pies (pumpkin is the other one)--since he's not a cake guy.
When we go to the library, he alternates checking out the same two tractor anthologies so we thought we'd get him his own book to keep for his birthday. He still likes weed wackers and has added augers to his list of YouTube videos he watches. Landscaping equipment and any large truck/machine fascinate him, along with vacuum cleaners (including Roomba).
He also has a love/hate relationship with spiders, so his fun friends wrapped the present they gave him in a spider.
His birthday gift from his grandparents (and us) was a trip to an indoor water park.
He loves being in the water and has really improved his swimming skills.
He likes to watch our chickens and play his instruments (piano, harmonica, didgeridoo). He has a big, infectious laugh that we love hearing and big heart that cares about others and about the Lord. We continue to thank God for giving us our boy! Happy birthday, buddy!
