Once Upon a Flock

by Lauren Scheuer

  Believe me, she was not broody.

  She played this broody game only to annoy her flock mates. If the other ladies were impatiently waiting their turn to lay an egg, well, that just made Lil’White sit even longer. I had seen her broody game before and I knew how to call her bluff. All it took to get her off the nest was a handful of cracked corn or a few raisins, and in a flash she would be outside snatching up treats with no recollection of ever having been broody.

  On that scorching day as I worked in the house, I looked out the window from time to time and noticed that Lil’White hadn’t come out of the nest box—for hours. I went to check on her. When I opened the lid of the nest box, she looked up at me with bulging eyes and beak wide open, gasping. It was really hot in there.

  I lifted her out and placed her on the grass. I offered her some water, but she could barely stand up, let alone drink. So I whisked her across the yard to Marky’s brand-new supersized water bowl and plunked her feet in the cool water.

  Marky wasn’t too sure he liked that.

  I put her back on the lawn, but she still wouldn’t drink—she just sat there gasping. So I lifted her golden wings and patted water in her armpits. I was concerned for her, but I also sort of enjoyed this rare moment communing with my beautiful standoffish Orpington. She would never tolerate such attention when she was feeling well. After about twenty minutes, she was able to rise and take a drink. She was going to be okay.

  From across the yard, Lucy had been watching Lil’White’s drama. When I carried my golden diva to a shady area nearby, Lucy limped across the lawn and sat down beside her.

  By now I had known Lucy long enough that such an act of kindness and concern should not have been surprising. But still I was surprised. You just don’t meet a compassionate chicken every day.

  Lil’White made no acknowledgment of Lucy’s sweet gesture. She stood still just a moment or two longer, then turned and walked away. And that was okay, because she’s Lil’White.

  The next day I cut a new window in the henhouse for cross ventilation so Lil’White’s future vindictive exploits would not do her in.

  Autumn brought relief for the whole flock, and the cool days revitalized our Lucy. She never did muster the strength that she had found when Roosterman was a chick, but on these brisk days she managed to shuffle around and keep up with Hatsy pretty well.

  But for Hatsy, autumn brought challenges. After those summer months of vivacious health, her strange illness came back. Her bad days were interspersed with stretches of good health that lasted just long enough for me to believe it wouldn’t happen again. But every week or two, it crept up.

  Each time the illness struck, Hatsy got quiet and sleepy. She stood with her head tucked and her eyes closed, unable or unwilling to move. The episodes lasted an hour or two. And each time, on the following morning, an enormous egg appeared in the nest box. These episodes always occurred late in the day, which indicated to me that the problem was related to her egg-laying cycle.

  One evening just after the sun went down, I headed out to put Roosterman into his coop and to lock up the ladies. As I opened the kitchen door and stepped outside, I thought I could see two small figures in the center of the yard. When I got closer, I was surprised to find Lucy and Hatsy standing alone in the darkness.

  Lucy looked up at me. Bup.

  Hatsy was hunched and silent. This time her illness must have overcome her as she was heading back to the coop. While I was very concerned about Hatsy, I was also overwhelmed by Lucy’s gesture of loyalty. As darkness closed in on the two hens, Lucy was faced with a choice. She could shuffle home with Lil’White to the safety of the coop, or she could remain with her friend. It had been Lucy’s choice to stand beside Hatsy as darkness and danger crept in around them.

  This time, Lucy’s compassion brought me to tears.

  I reached down and picked up our little Hatsy. I cradled her in my arms and walked her to the coop, very slowly, so that Lucy could keep up with us. Lil’White was already hunkered down in the henhouse on her own roost. I helped Lucy onto the higher one and placed Hatsy, eyes still shut, beside her dear friend.

  20

  Hatsy

  In between her strange episodes, Hatsy was as gregarious and lively and social as she ever had been. She remained the flock’s undisputed leader and an active participant in all backyard activities. And not just chicken activities.

  Hatsy helped me with yard work,

  she helped hunt for my car keys,

  and she performed occasional secretarial duties.

  Hatsy helped Danny clear the gutters,

  and on weekend mornings the two of them enjoyed raisins and warm sunshine together.

  But her spells continued, and they began to occur more frequently. When I discussed Hatsy’s problem with Rosario, the vet who had helped me with Lucy’s Marek’s disease, she suggested that I bring Hatsy to her house during one of the episodes in order that she could witness it. So I did. I was apologetic for ringing her doorbell at dinnertime, but Rosario welcomed me, and I carried Hatsy into her kitchen. Rosario cleared a spot on the counter. We spread a dish towel there and placed Hatsy upon it. She stood quietly, head tucked, eyes closed.

  Small children and dogs of various sizes chased each other around the kitchen, obviously ready for their dinner. Rosario gave a pot on the stove a quick stir and then turned to Hatsy for a little exam. Hatsy didn’t respond at all to her pokes and prods. Rosario set her laptop beside my little orange hen and surfed the Internet for information or any hints at all.

  She told me that Hatsy appeared to be in pain. I had suspected this but hated the thought. Some people don’t believe that pain in animals is the same as pain in humans, but whatever kind of pain she was in, it was debilitating. Rosario agreed with me that Hatsy’s reproductive system had blown a gasket. Something was amiss, and it was pretty serious. But Rosario was at a loss as to how to help her. We discussed the fact that Hatsy was a production hybrid, and that her rapid-fire egg laying probably had taken a toll on her health. I was saddened by the connection to our factory farm food system that Hatsy represented. Her breed was designed to burn the candle at both ends. She laid more eggs in one year than some other breeds lay in three. So, in a way, our society’s demand for cheap eggs was ultimately the cause of Hatsy’s problems. Rosario smiled sadly and gave Hatsy a gentle caress. I thanked her for allowing me to interrupt her family’s dinner with yet another sick chicken. Then I tucked my hen into my arms and took her home.

  Sarah was disappointed that we couldn’t come up with a cure for Hatsy. She suggested that we set up a spot in the kitchen for her to spend the night, but I really felt that the best place for her was among her flock. Out in the coop, I set her gently on the roost beside Lucy, who bupped a quiet greeting.

  The next day, I discovered something horrific in the nest box. It looked more like a giant wad of chewed gum than anything else. After Hatsy expelled that horror, she stopped laying eggs altogether. I felt relieved for her and hoped that this was the beginning of healthy times.

  But the end of egg laying was not the end of Hatsy’s troubles. In the dead of winter, on the coldest of days, Hatsy began to molt. So our little orange hen who hadn’t an ounce of fat to keep her warm now had very few feathers either. Sarah and I went out to take a look at her and see what we might do to help her keep warm. Sarah suggested I crochet her a sweater. I thought a heat lamp might be sufficient. Lucy and Lil’White came over to greet us, but Hatsy stayed shivering in the corner. While Sarah and I continued our discussion, Lucy turned and ambled toward her friend. She stumbled forward until their bodies met, and then she pressed even closer. Lucy turned to face us, all fluffed and smooshed against Hatsy.

  And there she stayed, keeping her friend warm.

  That afternoon I put a heat lamp out in the run. Hatsy appreciated the cozy red glow and huddled so close to the lamp that I wondered if I should come out and baste her.

  One cold morning a few weeks later, I st
ood at the window and looked out at my flock. I could tell that something was different in the coop. I could see Hatsy standing hunched in the corner, her face toward the wall. Lil’White and Lucy stood beside her. Roosterman in his cage near the coop was just hanging around as well. He didn’t crow. He didn’t strut. Lucy and Lil’White weren’t scratching or preening. They weren’t doing anything.

  Hatsy’s flock knew.

  Their vigil lasted about an hour. Then Lil’White and Lucy left Hatsy alone in the coop and quietly scratched together out in the yard. For the rest of the day, Hatsy stood alone, sometimes in the coop and sometimes upstairs in the henhouse. I kept an eye on Hatsy and the flock all day from a respectful distance. Only once that day did I choke back my sadness and visit her. I offered her a bit of food, but she didn’t eat. I offered water, and she opened her eyes and took a sip.

  The next morning I found Hatsy sleeping on the floor of the henhouse. I petted her, but she didn’t respond. She was blocking the doorway, and I was concerned that if the other girls needed to get to the nest box they might jostle or step on her. So I picked up my little orange hen and brought her back to the house. Danny met me at the door with a cardboard carton. After we added some pine bedding, I placed Hatsy gently inside. Danny sat down beside the box and reached in to stroke her feathers.

  I started across the kitchen thinking maybe I’d put on a pot of coffee, but I heard a muffled flutter of wings and turned to look at the box. The fluttering slowed and then there was silence. Danny looked up at me. A puff of pine shavings snowed quietly down around him.

  Our Hatsy was gone.

  I wrapped her beautiful body in a clean linen dish towel and put her out on the screened porch. Then I got my garden spade from the shed and used it to slowly poke my way around the perimeter of the yard, searching for a thawed piece of earth in which to dig. When I found some workable soil under a pine tree, I fetched Hatsy’s shrouded body and placed it on the ground nearby. Lucy and Lil’White came to join me.

  While I dug the hole, Lil’White and Lucy eagerly assisted, lunging for each worm and grub as it was uncovered. The two girls showed no sentiment and didn’t stop to look at Hatsy’s orange feathers poking out from under the linen shroud beside them. Lucy and Lil’White had paid their respects the day before.

  As soon as they enjoyed the last worm at the graveside, they moved on. I placed our dear Hatsy’s body in the ground and covered it with soil. Then I leaned on my spade and fell completely apart. I cried and cried, more than I would ever have expected to cry over a chicken.

  I cried for the end of a beautiful friendship between two soulful creatures. I cried for Lucy’s loss.

  The next morning, I watched from the kitchen window as my two remaining ladies busied themselves in the yard. Only two hens. The sight seemed unbearably wrong to me. Two hens just did not make a flock. The girls needed a third. And I needed to stop crying.

  I got into the car and drove off in search of a hen.

  21

  Pigeon the Chicken

  The nearest farm was only ten minutes away, so that was my first stop. I drove up the lane past several tidy pastures and stopped beside a dazzling white barn. Dozens of chickens of all colors and sizes drifted across the barnyard while two swarthy roosters kept watch. The farmer was fiddling with a big piece of machinery, and when I stepped out of the car he wiped his hands on his pants and came over to greet me. I clutched a tear-soaked tissue and took a deep breath, hoping my voice would come out steady. I smiled and introduced myself as a neighbor. I told him that I had just lost a chicken and was hoping to acquire a young laying hen to replace her, and asked if he might have a hen that he would be willing to sell. The farmer pulled off his cap and scratched his head and looked around at his large flock.

  “No.”

  He was a man of few words. I broke the silence by asking him if he knew where I might be able to buy a young hen. He suggested I try a farm a few roads up, around three or four curves and past a field of sheep on the left.

  So there I went.

  Sure enough, just past the sheep I spied a fat brown hen scooting across a deeply rutted driveway. I pulled over and got out of the car. In the open doorway of a barn-type garage sat a skinny old man on a bale of hay. Beside him in the garage were half a dozen roosters in large stacked cages crowing at the tops of their lungs. A cacophony of chickens squawked and clucked somewhere out of sight.

  Trying to appear both neighborlike and farmerlike, I tucked both hands in my pockets and sauntered casually toward the old guy. I smiled and complimented him on the pretty little hen in the driveway.

  He adjusted his dirty glasses and peered at the hen.

  “She’s the neighbor’s.”

  Another farmer of few words.

  I introduced myself and explained that I was seeking to purchase a hen and that he had been recommended by a farmer up the road. He just squinted at me, so I proceeded to tell him about Hatsy’s death and my quest for a new flock member.

  He looked down. Said maybe there was one hen he could part with.

  Slowly he raised himself up and turned around. I followed him into the darkness. We squeezed past an ancient dusty tractor and some other old machinery, past a row of chicken-filled cages toward a narrow staircase on the back wall. I stopped beside a hutch at the base of the stairs while the farmer climbed to the second floor. He opened a gate at the top of the stairs and disappeared. His footsteps met with a mess of flapping and squawking and carrying on, and fine dust powdered down from the rafters above my head. Then the gate swung open again, and out of a great cloud of grime emerged an upside-down chicken, followed by the old guy clutching its ankles.

  The man carried the bird back to his hay bale in the sun. He flipped her right side up on his lap and attempted to make her more attractive by smoothing her disheveled and broken feathers.

  “She’s molting,” he explained.

  “Her comb’s kind of mangled and bloody.” I winced.

  “Rooster did it.”

  “Her toenails are really long,” I pointed out.

  He pulled a pair of toenail clippers out of his pocket, clipped her nails, then put her down on the dirt.

  The hen just stood there.

  He told me that she was a Barred Rock, and that she was very friendly. He said that a boy up the road had raised her as a pet, but for some reason he wasn’t able to keep her, so she ended up here.

  My guess is that the old man had tossed her into a crowded cage with an established group of hens, and they had pecked and bullied her into her present condition.

  I knew that I shouldn’t bring such a sickly specimen home, but I had a feeling that if I didn’t take her she’d be dead soon.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Oh, how about five.”

  While I fished some money out of the car, the old man dug up a small carton and cut a breathing hole in it. He placed the bird inside and tied the package neatly with a length of orange twine. He handed me the box and I gave him the five dollars. I returned to my car with the little package, feeling rather foolish. The box was as light as a feather, and I found it hard to believe that there was even a chicken inside.

  I sat it down beside me on the passenger seat and peeked into the hole.

  A little eyeball looked back at me.

  Back at home, I sat down in the garage with my parcel and opened it up to have a closer look. The bird didn’t flutter or flinch as I reached in and lifted her from the box. I placed her on the floor and she took a few shuffling steps. Skinny and bloody, broken feathers, toes curled backward. She walked like a pigeon. She was a fixer-upper.

  I offered her a small cup of water and she hesitated with every sip, lifting her head and looking around as if expecting to be murdered at any moment.

  It was clear that she had been at the very bottom of the pecking order in that old attic. And she smelled really, really bad. I left her in the garage under an upturned laundry basket until I could figure out what to d
o next.

  I decided to e-mail my friend Terry Golson, knowing she’d have some good advice. Terry is a chicken guru of sorts, whose popular Hencam.com blog I had been following for quite some time. She and I lived within close enough range of each other that we were able to get together for an occasional cup of coffee, and we had become friends in chicken fanaticism. I hesitate to bother Terry for advice because she has thousands of followers who probably also bother her for advice. But as usual, Terry responded to my e-mail right away. She told me to give the hen a good bath and to put her in quarantine.

  A bath?

  Yep, and a blow-dry. Terry told me how.

  Pigeon actually seemed to enjoy her spa treatment, although it completely wore her out.

  Afterward, she still looked really bad, but she didn’t smell so much.

  I wheeled the chicken tractor around to the front yard and set it up as Pigeon’s home for her month of rehab and quarantine. During this period I would watch her for any coughing or mites or signs of illness that could endanger my healthy girls.