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2010-06-13 - 8:51 a.m.

Yesterday was a bad day.

We are trying to integrate or two sets of chickens. We have five chickens from last year with five new more exotic chickens we got this spring. For a while we kept the new ones in the garage but that gets old (and smelly) after a while so we moved their cage into the coop and continued to "house" them separately. The new chickens are still immature, just now beginning to show their combs. We have let the new chickens stretch their legs a little by letting the older chickens into the yard adjacent to the run and letting the new chickens into the run. We decided to try to integrate. The chickens can be brutal, the "pecking order" is a real important thing to chickens. The day before yesterday, after the older chickens were moved back into the run we left the new chickens out of their separate cage for a bit and while there were some ruffled feathers, no real bullying occurred. Yesterday we let them out together again. Again, no real squawking so we assumed all was well. When My Darling suggested I check on them I was appalled to find the beautiful black chicken entangled in the netting we had put up to keep the chickens from climbing through the fence when they were still little. Not only was she stuck but the other chickens had plucked all the feathers and skin off her tail end. She was down to the bone. I was horrified. Sick about how I hadn't heard her complaints and didn't check frequently enough to save her. We had to put her down, there was no way she would have survived. While I realize she is just a chicken and I have no intention of becoming a vegetarian, I still hate to see animals suffer. I abstain from veal not because it is a baby (I love lamb) but because the way it is raised seems cruel to me. This poor bird suffered and it was my fault. If I had checked more frequently I might have got her out before they had just about killed her. I wanted to cry , my chest hurt. Instead of watching the chickens more closely I was cleaning my house, I spent the whole day cleaning the house. Before and after the death of our bird.

I need to express how bad I feel, why I feel so very bad about this poor little bird.

I wanted so much to have a clean house. The week of building the swing set I didn't do anything but the bare minimum of home care, laundry and dishes, and to be honest my depressed mood had kept me ambivalent about my household chores in general so the place seemed so in need of my concentrated effort. Here is my main concern. My focus is really strong, I can tune out everything in the world as I focus on what I am doing. When I read a bomb could go off and I might not notice it. While this may seem a good thing it can also mean that I don't hear when chickens are being pecked within an inch of their life and by extension, my Baby Boy needing me. I can hear him whimper in his sleep, wakes me right up, but would I miss him calling the same as I missed the chickens cries?

Today it is raining, misting more than rain. It is cool for a change and so I can open all the windows and air the place out. But the dreariness does nothing for my mood. Any pleasure I might take from my clean house is tempered by the reality of the cost.

This week I will need to get ready for our vacation. I am also hoping to move a couple of our cabinets to make room for a new fridge. This will also mean filling in the hole in the hardwood floor created by flooring around the lower cabinet. It will be like fitting together a puzzle. I will need to cut the pieces very precisely in order to incorporate the new floor into the old. It's important I don't damage the existing floor as I fill in the hole. We really want a large side by side but the only way we can have one is to move the cabinets. I know I can do this, in fact I did it with the RV except it was a parquet floor rather than bamboo so the pieces were smaller and easier to incorporate.

Dreary, dreary, dreary.

I want to do something, anything to distract me from my guilt.

How do you say "I'm sorry" to a dead chicken.

I wish you Peace

~alison~


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- - 2013-08-16

Darkness - 2013-04-18

Too much - 2013-04-09

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