My Little Women

At 10 pm last Saturday night, under an almost full moon, I walked out to the chicken coop, said goodnight to the girls, and slid the door closed to their house. Sometime between then and 6:30 Sunday morning this happened.

Louisa, Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy were two months old. They had lost their down and were sporting their adult feathers. Louisa was a silver-laced Wyandotte, an elegant black, gray, silver, and white bird. Jo and Meg were golden-laced Wyandottes, real stunners, with orange, gold, and brown feathers. Beth was buff Wyandotte, with fiery ginger-orange plumage. Amy was a Buff Orpington, a big blond. She was the brave one. They had spent the day, warm and sunshiny, doing what chickens do, in their new expanded run. I think it was a good day for them.

When I saw the upended coop, the feeder and waterer tossed aside, the food scattered, the nesting box door off its hinges (that’s how the bear got to them after toppling the coop ), I was stunned by the violence. I’ve lost a chicken or two in the past to a raccoon. This was not like that. This was a mass attack.

There had been black bear sightings out here for weeks. Two friends, walking on a forested trail a mile from my house, saw a mother and cubs ambling down a hillside a day before that bear, or some other, found my chickens. Others in town reported bears getting into trash cans. We are the interlopers, I understand that.

Losing these hens is not like losing a cherished animal that has been one’s companion for years. I know that. And it is certainly not like other even greater losses I have (we all have) experienced. But–have you noticed?–everything in life is more than it seems, more nuanced, layered, deeper. A lesson. I brought those girls home when they were 2-day-old puff balls. They thrived under a heat lamp in a big, galvanized steel trough filled with sweet-smelling pellets in what used to be Tom’s office. I named them, fed them, held them, talked to them. I slowly introduced them to the outdoors, a half hour at a time on sunny days. When it came time, one of my sons and I put together the coop and built the run: sturdy, secured, raccoon-proof, fox-proof.

What I am saying is: I nurtured these girls. I tried to keep them safe. And, in the end, I couldn’t.

Simon guarded them too. This was their first outdoor outing.