Chicken Gone. Woman Weeps.

Yesterday, just as I was getting ready to get the big kids from school my phone rang. It was neighbor saying that a dog was in our back yard (we do not have a dog). She told me it was taunting the chickens in their run. Then her voice changed to panic and told me one of the chickens flew over their tall fence!
With my baby girl on my hip, I ran outside in my socks and grabbed a broom. I saw the dog pick up one of our black australorps and shake it in it's mouth. My neighbor shrieked and shouted NO! I ran at the dog, who dropped the hen. Then I ran up to the house and banged on my mom's door and handed her the baby. Being as silly as me, she ran into the snow with no shoes on and the baby on her hip. The dog picked up the hen again and shook her some more. I threw a plastic plant pot at the dog and he dropped the chicken again.

I should add that the dog was a good-sized husky and if  you know me at all, you'll know that I have a fear of big dogs. I was bit by a German Shepherd when I was 6 and since then I just don't trust them. I like dogs, but in my mind, as cute, clever and charming as some can be, they're still animals. They hunt. They bite. And aside from dear old Agnes Mae (my old Basset Hound, may she RIP), I just can't run up on many dogs. To me, they're fairly unpredictable.

At any rate, I ran the husky out of my yard and it cantered down the street. It had a collar on, though I'd never seen it before. With the dog gone, I checked on our hen. She was alive, and there wasn't any blood in the snow, but she didn't look good. Her breathing was labored and when she tried to walk, she stumbled and fell. Aside from being late now for picking kids up, I also was coming down with a chest cold and had a fever and aches. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed a blanket from the house and put it in the snow for the hen to rest on until I could get back home and figure out what was next. I didn't place her back in the run or coop because I was afraid the other hens would peck at her once they figured out she was injured. All the other hens had hid in the coop when the dog ran up and down their run fencing, it was just this one panicky gal that flew the coop.

Getting to and from school in the afternoon typically takes 45 minutes or so. Once I was back, I sent my son upstairs to hang out with his Grandma and put our oldest daughter in charge of the baby. I tried calling my husband several times but he didn't pick up. I knew I had to kill that hen. Ack. I've never killed a chicken before. So like any person looking for how-to instructionals, I turned to You Tube. Why?! I've counseled so many pregnant people NOT to go to You Tube when looking for births. You just never know what you'll find and by the time you see what you don't want to see, it's too damn late. I watched several different types of chicken killing courtesy of You Tube. The more I watched, the less confident I felt about my ability to kill this chicken. I was shaking cold, feverish and very, very sad. I also thought about what a pathetic "urban farmer" I am to not be able to complete this cycle of life, yada yada. I'll be the first to admit that I am a wimp here. I grew up in crappy, urban rentals with meals that came very far away from any farm-like source. I am not a child of the land. I was a vegetarian for 7 years, and before that did my best to avoid meat for at least 10 more. Crap! There I sat letting my boots melt snow all over the dining room floor when I heard my husband pull in the driveway.

I met him outside and explained the whole debacle. I told him how I'd been watching You Tube videos trying to muster up the courage to just end that hen's life but I couldn't do it. G is a very practical guy. "It's just a chicken. Just kill it." I can't.  With a big sigh he went into the snowy back yard and picked up the hen and agreed she'd be better off not suffering any longer. She clearly had a broken leg and wing. A few years ago when we raised meat birds at a friend's farm, G would go there every day after work and kill and process 2-3 birds a day, bringing the meat home in a new garbage bag for me to rinse them off and then package them properly. I never witnessed any of the processing though. G told me his preferred method of offing a chicken is to just obstruct the airway, i.e., strangle her. He very tenderly picked up the hen and laid her in the straw, belly down. He shushed her and with one strong hand around her neck, tightened his grasp. Just as wings fluttered to flap wildly (like I saw on You Tube), he held down her wings very gently and she didn't move at all. She was dead in 45-60 seconds. I stood in the snow and wept with sadness and shook with fever.

Stupid dog.

The sun was going down, the kids were hungry, I was sick and G had on sweaty clothes from working out at the gym. None of us had it in us to scald the feathers off this bird and clean her up for eating. As wasteful as it was, I double-bagged her in garbage bags and buried her in a garbage can and drug the whole lot to the curb. It was garbage night.





Sigh.