R.I.P. Buffy the chicken
posted in Livestock and Pets, OmegaDotter, OmegaMom, Parenting |There is a bad side effect of naming your chickens with similar names.
OmegaDad and the dotter were going out to check the chickens and take a new bag of chicken feed out to Le Grand Coop; I sat down at the computer to listen to some Chinese pop singers on YouTube and read an intense description of freezing almost to death. While I was sitting there, suddenly the dotter pops up at the window, thumping on it and yelling, “Come quick! Daddy needs you!”
WTF? Hunh. Okay. So I schlep out to the garage door, put on boots and jacket, whap the garage door opener, and start out, only to be confronted with a teary dotter and a somber OmegaDad.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Buffy’s dead!” the dotter cries.
The bad side effect I mentioned up above comes into play here: I thought–given that Puff has been broody lately–that it was Puff who was dead.
OmegaDad hustled us into the house, where I promptly cuddled up with the sobbing (sobbing!) dotter on the futon in the family room. While I was surprised and slightly upset, I wasn’t quite understanding why the dotter was in such tears; Puff, though quite cute, isn’t really the most lovable of chickens. (Not bad, mind you, but not exactly an overwhelming personality.)
I was nonplussed and feeling guilty: my very own OmegaDotter was collapsed in tears on my lap and I was feeling…well, surprised and slightly upset. So I’m patting her and cuddling her and stroking her and saying I’m sorry, and feeling overwhelmed with the question of How To Deal With A Griefstricken Dotter.
OmegaDad returns and explains that it seems that the chicken appears to have been flying and flown into something and broken her neck. I’m sitting there thinking it’s broody Puff who has died, and the last I knew (a) Puff can’t fly and (b) she’s broody, and broody hens don’t do anything approximating the amount of energy it takes to fly. So, in addition to being nonplussed and surprised and slightly guilty, I’m now puzzled.
And the dotter is sobbing in my lap. And then crawling over to OmegaDad to be snuggled and cry in his lap. In my confusion, I mutter something about how I knew she was broody, and was he sure it was an accident and not broodiness that did her in? In his confusion, he asks, “Broody?! Buffy was broody?!” And I’m still hearing “Puff”, and this orthagonal conversation continues until there’s a blinding light in my brain as the neurons finally connect, and the word “Buffy” connects with “beautiful apricot colored chicken who is a total sweetheart who loves to cuddle and likes to sit on top of OmegaDotter’s head” and Oh. My. Gawd. Buffy’s dead!
At which point, I understood the dotter’s grief, because Buffy, fluffhead though she was, was the OmegaFamily’s absolute favorite of the chickens, and suddenly I wanted to start crying.
Obviously, we are not cut out to be farmers or pioneer types.
Anyway: OmegaDotter was truly in distress for quite a while this evening. And even after calming down, and all of us going out to dinner (whilst OmegaDad surreptitiously disposed of the corpse) and having fancy desserts and chardonnay for me and a Shirley Temple for the dotter, at the late, late hour of 10 p.m., when the dotter finally was put to bed, she needed to do our nightly Feeling Game ritual, and needed to talk about Buffy.
Sometimes being a parent just blindsides you…
