Tragedy Strikes

At 6:30 this evening, Bee happened to look out the window and notice a chicken flying across the front yard.  Mind you, I'd just installed an awesome, rickety, semi-anti-chicken barrier to keep them out of there and cut down on the areas of chicken poop in which to step.  (The cats have been ecstatic to have the front yard back.  The chickens have been sulking).  Anyway, we trundled out to throw the chickens back into the side yard . . . and realized there was a raccoon in their open run.

We chased the raccoon into the field, but it was too late: Calamity Jane, our favorite chicken, the most-outgoing and quirky, had been killed.


I am, of course, embroiled in the seven stages of grief.  I'm proud to report that it took me only a few minutes to go through the first six stages: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, and depression.  OK, I skipped 'denial' and 'bargaining', but only because I'm an over-achiever.

Yes, we knew it was a possibility the hawks or raccoons might get to a chicken, but that doesn't make Jane's death any easier to accept.  In fact, that just pounds the guilt in more, because we didn't guard against it enough.  We'd grown complacent, leaving the chickens alone in the yard more and more: they were so happy to run around all day and peck through the grass, and they'd been doing it for months.  We felt safe during the days, and always locked them up at night.

Damn raccoon, spoiling the chickens' fun and ours: now we'll have to go back to keeping the chickens in their run all the time.  What was that raccoon doing coming into our yard when it was still light out, anyway?

I feel depressed Jane had to die that way, and angry to have lost what was potentially our best egg-layer.  Then I feel guilty mourning her eggs instead of just her.

It's funny how it can take just a split-second to change your mood from good to bad, but then it can take forever to get back to good.  I may have worked through the first six stages of grief, but I've yet to get to the last: acceptance.  I can accept that Jane is gone, but I don't yet have any sense of peace about it.