Outside The Box

Four years ago when there were no eggs to be found in the grocery stores, an impossibly small box containing an unlikely number of baby chicks arrived at our house. One poor traveler did not survive the trip, but the rest of the herd we divided into two camps housed in large pet carriers lined with plastic and bedded with pine shavings.

Heat lamps kept them warm in the shop. Two cats and two dogs kept them company, and they grew rapidly, surrounded by the sights and sounds of busy humans. When the weather allowed, we moved them all into a temporary outdoor “chicken shanty” while their permanent home was being built.

On my grandparents’ farms, chickens were eggs and meat. Every care was given to keep them healthy because kindness was a life principle, but I never observed much affection for the livestock. The exception was Old Daisy, my grandpa’s plow horse of 33 years who was so in tune with her friend and master that when Pa stumbled behind the plow, Daisy would immediately stop pulling and wait for him to regain his balance. They were both in their 80’s, relative to equine and human lifespans, and Pa cried the day she left him to live out her remaining years with a younger man who could better see to her care. The love of a good horse may only appear once in a man’s lifetime, if he is lucky.

Most of us feel immediate affection in the presence of a puppy or kitten, or even the infants of a number of other species. For many people a chicken is not high on the list of animals that inspire such affection. Baby chicks are cute. Chickens are dirty, destructive, thieving and murderous. And funny. And when you raise them from babies you learn that they each have distinct personalities.

C.S. Lewis wrote that affection begins subtly, often without our noticing it, and that it transcends barriers of age, sex, class and even species. If you keep chickens long enough, some of them will make you laugh. Some will follow you wherever you go, get excited when you show up, run to you for safety when they are afraid. If you plan on raising chickens for meat, don’t give them names. I guarantee you won’t eat a chicken you have cared enough to name.

Hazel was given a name because she was loud and wide, like the Hazel Burke of classic television. She came when I called, was glad to see me, hid behind my legs when she didn’t feel like dancing with one of the roosters.

Philosophers and psychologists tell us that anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human entities. They tell us that cats and dogs, and chickens, are incapable of love and affection, that they are merely behaving instinctually in ways that mimic those emotions. I’m not entirely sure that many philosophers and psychologists aren’t behaving in ways that mimic science, but I would venture a guess that some of them were those kids at birthday parties who like to let the air out of the balloons.

I’m not in the mood for psychology today, but I am feeling philosophical. I buried Hazel this afternoon, at the end of the garlic patch where I know that nothing will disturb her remains. She came to us for help when she felt bad, leaving the flock and standing by the gate where we could see her. She was egg bound.

We did what we could; checked for obstructions, bathed her in an Epsom salt bath, massaged her, kept her in the shop, warm and quiet. She recovered for a while and even had a last meal of some earthworms I gathered. She hadn’t eaten for days. Finally she just went to sleep and fell over softly as her spark of life returned to the Creator from whence it came.

Hazel was just a chicken, but she was one of our pandemic babies. She was a new start in the strange and often frightening new world this one has become. She was a signpost on the road back to healing, health and strength for our family after a debilitating illness. She survived the night of the bear attack on the chicken shanty, the flood of rain and hail that overflowed the ditch, the bombardment of the hawk, the stealthy coyote and the ravaging bobcat. She would stop by most afternoons and wait outside the shop for a special treat. She came to us for help, and we were unable to save her.

She was just a chicken, and I’m sad that her life was cut short. I don’t know what the philosophers and psychologists would say, but I believe that when we grieve for the loss of a pet, or a person, or even a chicken, our sadness encompasses more than just the personality which has departed. Each entity we encounter is a placeholder for, or delineates a host of memories. Every loss ends a chapter, sometimes an entire book. It reminds us of the time that has passed in the making of that story. It reminds us of our own mortality.

Never mind the “sorry for your loss,” that thing we say, worth it’s weight in pixels, to people we don’t know well. She was just a chicken, and we still have Rachael Ray, Bonnie Pointer, Gilligan and Mary Anne, and Miz Drysdale. The chicken legs at Aldi’s will still taste just as good, but my, how the time does pass so quickly.

The Book tells us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s difficult, especially in this age of self-loathing disguised as self-love and wrapped in self-absorption, and some neighbors are harder to love than a chicken. I believe that’s why the Creator gave us this myriad of creatures, our pets and all the others, to practice affection, to make sure our capacity for love does not atrophy. It is the only thing standing between us and oblivion.