A fox took my hens final month. “All my gorgeous chickens … at one fell swoop,” as Macduff says in Macbeth, despite the incontrovertible reality that, clearly, Macduff is talking about his real kids, now not bantams. They were very gorgeous indeed, despite the incontrovertible reality that, my women.
Weeks later, I’m soundless discovering feathers. I cleared the bulk of the shiny ones the next day with a leaden heart: five piles marking the loss of life of each of my five beloveds. The itsy-bitsy speckled gang-chief women, Eris and Faustina, shining goth-shaded Josephine, broody, petrol-iridescent Stella and stoic beige-bearded Daphne, the flock sentry, on the total alert to any possibility. Used to be she caught off guard on a balmy early night time, distracted by a worm, or a scrap with a magpie? I strive to cease speculating, imagining, blaming myself for going out, for now not maintaining them safe. But their downy, impossibly delicate below-feathers have lingered: I fetch them snagged on bushes, tumbling all around the straw-dry grass, gathering in microscopic drifts on the bristles of the doormat. They take ambushing me.
I shove them in my pocket, then add them to the microscopic handful I’ve placed on my assign of residing of business shelf: a itsy-bitsy shrine for such reasonably danger. I’m mourning what would barely constitute the contents of a KFC family feast bucket and with the shut to-infinite amount of suffering in the market, it appears to be like self-indulgent to feel so unhappy. But as any chook keeper, hamster owner or budgie lover will uncover you, these microscopic our bodies could well well even be receptacles for an mountainous amount of admire. I will soundless feel the weight and heat and particular form of each of my hens, all that fluff, their posthaste bird hearts beating in opposition to mine.
I shouldn’t acquire more hens; it’s some distance now not life like. The fox is conscious of the assign the all-you-can-use buffet is now, so I’ll must soundless be infinitely more vigilant. Chicken flu is devastating and has taken the enjoyable out of backyard chicken-maintaining for loads of the year. It’s hard to leave, too, must you’re tied to feathery tyrants. But the slow, sore heart needs what it needs: six more are coming subsequent week.
Emma Beddington is a freelan