Regaj
Chirping
So, you order up this small flock of chicks, imagining the eggs and the entertainment and tiny bit of food independence that they represent. The box comes in the mail, thrumming with life. And from the first moments back home, dipping little beaks in water and carefully placing those little furry blobs inside the brooder, your life is changed.
What you don’t expect is how quickly you will grow so powerfully fond of them. The chicks grow into adolescence, becoming pullets and cockerel. And then into young adults, the girls laying eggs and the rooster insisting that he is cock of the walk. And all of them, together, becoming the presence that is ever in your consciousness, their domain just outside the house a treasured and special piece of ground.
What you don’t expect is the worry you quickly have about their comfort and welfare. You didn’t know you were going to install heating in the coop to cut the worst cold of winter. Or a fan to make the heat of summer a little more tolerable. But you do.
What you don’t expect is how, day after day, they will give you lesson after lesson in life. In humility. In optimism. In joy. In steadfast duty.
You expect loss. But what you don’t expect is the horror it will shine upon you. The phone call from you’re wife, sobbing, saying “come home. It’s the chicks. They’ve been attacked.” And you race home to find chaos. An explosion of white feathers everywhere on the ground. One dead hen. One missing. And four injured, deeply traumatized survivors. And an hour later deep in the woods with a 12 gauge shotgun, tracking the fox and the hen it carried off. You find her body, abandoned, and bring it back to bury with the other one.
What you don’t expect is to ever use your house as a hunting blind. But one evening a couple days after the attack finds you with the lights turned off, the kitchen door open, and a rifle mounted atop a tripod, pointing out that open door. Sixty yards away is the predator call you’ve set. You grimly endure the mosquito bites while slowly glassing the edge of the woods with the riflescope, the red predator light you’ve attached imparting an otherworldliness to it all. And when the sudden movement and the glowing eyes resolve into what you are looking for, it dies.
You and your wife have long joked about the wildlife refuge you live within. Every creature under the sun, save only mosquitoes and house flies, has always been welcome. But your personal vendetta with the foxes has begun. Never again will they be allowed to grace your landscape.
What you don’t expect is how much you will laugh and shake your head at the countless shenanigans of your chicks. Of how happy and clever and insightful they are. Of how they have such unique personalities.
What you don’t expect is how much you will grow to love them. How sweet they are. And how much you will worry over them.
What you don’t expect is how, when they get sick, it’s all on you. Even in a rural farming community, vets don’t usually treat chickens.
What you don’t expect is how having one indoors for nine days, living in a small puppy cage at the end of the couch, trying to get well, will have you thinking of little else.
What you don’t expect is how heartbreaking it is when you have to let her go. Because nothing has worked and her pitiful existence has shrunk to a place that’s painful and unfair. The joie de vivre that has been at the center of her being every day of her life, has gone missing.
What you don’t expect is how hard that decision is.
What you don’t expect are the macho-guy tears, across a sleepless night, as dawn slowly approaches.
What you don’t expect is how hard it is making her her breakfast of all her favorite things - the squashed boiled egg she has enjoyed every morning since she was a baby chick, yogurt, blueberries, and mealworms. And then, when she’s done, placing a clean towel upon the floor outside her cage, lifting her out, wrapping her gently in the towel, and carrying her outside behind the shed. Asking God to please help you with this. Trying to avoid looking into those bright, trusting eyes. Stroking her soft head one last time. And telling her “Daddy loves you.”
What you don’t expect is the savage wrongness you feel for the horrible thing you just did. And knowing that’s never going to go away.
What you don’t expect is what she, and the others, came to mean to you. And that, in the end, that's what made it all such a gift.
What you don’t expect is how quickly you will grow so powerfully fond of them. The chicks grow into adolescence, becoming pullets and cockerel. And then into young adults, the girls laying eggs and the rooster insisting that he is cock of the walk. And all of them, together, becoming the presence that is ever in your consciousness, their domain just outside the house a treasured and special piece of ground.
What you don’t expect is the worry you quickly have about their comfort and welfare. You didn’t know you were going to install heating in the coop to cut the worst cold of winter. Or a fan to make the heat of summer a little more tolerable. But you do.
What you don’t expect is how, day after day, they will give you lesson after lesson in life. In humility. In optimism. In joy. In steadfast duty.
You expect loss. But what you don’t expect is the horror it will shine upon you. The phone call from you’re wife, sobbing, saying “come home. It’s the chicks. They’ve been attacked.” And you race home to find chaos. An explosion of white feathers everywhere on the ground. One dead hen. One missing. And four injured, deeply traumatized survivors. And an hour later deep in the woods with a 12 gauge shotgun, tracking the fox and the hen it carried off. You find her body, abandoned, and bring it back to bury with the other one.
What you don’t expect is to ever use your house as a hunting blind. But one evening a couple days after the attack finds you with the lights turned off, the kitchen door open, and a rifle mounted atop a tripod, pointing out that open door. Sixty yards away is the predator call you’ve set. You grimly endure the mosquito bites while slowly glassing the edge of the woods with the riflescope, the red predator light you’ve attached imparting an otherworldliness to it all. And when the sudden movement and the glowing eyes resolve into what you are looking for, it dies.
You and your wife have long joked about the wildlife refuge you live within. Every creature under the sun, save only mosquitoes and house flies, has always been welcome. But your personal vendetta with the foxes has begun. Never again will they be allowed to grace your landscape.
What you don’t expect is how much you will laugh and shake your head at the countless shenanigans of your chicks. Of how happy and clever and insightful they are. Of how they have such unique personalities.
What you don’t expect is how much you will grow to love them. How sweet they are. And how much you will worry over them.
What you don’t expect is how, when they get sick, it’s all on you. Even in a rural farming community, vets don’t usually treat chickens.
What you don’t expect is how having one indoors for nine days, living in a small puppy cage at the end of the couch, trying to get well, will have you thinking of little else.
What you don’t expect is how heartbreaking it is when you have to let her go. Because nothing has worked and her pitiful existence has shrunk to a place that’s painful and unfair. The joie de vivre that has been at the center of her being every day of her life, has gone missing.
What you don’t expect is how hard that decision is.
What you don’t expect are the macho-guy tears, across a sleepless night, as dawn slowly approaches.
What you don’t expect is how hard it is making her her breakfast of all her favorite things - the squashed boiled egg she has enjoyed every morning since she was a baby chick, yogurt, blueberries, and mealworms. And then, when she’s done, placing a clean towel upon the floor outside her cage, lifting her out, wrapping her gently in the towel, and carrying her outside behind the shed. Asking God to please help you with this. Trying to avoid looking into those bright, trusting eyes. Stroking her soft head one last time. And telling her “Daddy loves you.”
What you don’t expect is the savage wrongness you feel for the horrible thing you just did. And knowing that’s never going to go away.
What you don’t expect is what she, and the others, came to mean to you. And that, in the end, that's what made it all such a gift.
, I wish you happiness 
