A Eulogy for a Chicken: Farewell, Annabel….

(By Nancy West)

At first glance, I thought she was taking one of her leisurely dust baths under the Cube coop, with her gorgeous monarch butterfly feathers glowing in the late afternoon sun.  But when the other girls greeted me at the fence as they usually do , and Annabel remained frozen in place, I knew something was amiss.  She had never missed an opportunity to grab a few leaves of spinach or grains of scratch until this moment….

I peered closer and knew she was gone.  Her yellow claws curled up under her belly, and her head tucked under her left wing feathers–no sign of a struggle, no blood, no silly soft clucking sounds….She was simply still………..

Having tended to her needs and watched her “growth and development” from a two day old “chicklet” to a mature hen during these past two years, I can attest to Annabel’s being more than just a chicken.  Not only was she stunningly beautiful with perfectly arranged orange/black feathers–a classic Golden Wyandotte– but she possessed “character” as well.  Annabel’s every waking moment was devoted to scratching and pecking with total abandon.  When her opportunities seemed to diminish, she would hop up onto the top of the coop and attempt to fly out into the yard in search of the most promising  grubs and worms.  She loved to scratch around the base of the blackberry vines and the gooseberry bushes surrounding the garden’s perimeter.  Annabel was the hen who most yearned for her freedom, so we frequently had to chase her around and around the corral’s perimeter before she finally gave up and let us catch her.

Our favorite Annabel memory is when she caught a young garden snake while free ranging in the back yard last year. Obviously delighted with her catch of the day, she raced around with the startled snake wriggling and writhing as it dangled from her beak.  Eventually she dropped it as she couldn’t swallow it, and we rescued the hapless creature by tossing it into the woods.

Of course, a chicken’s raison d’etre is to provide humans with either eggs or meat.  Finding freshly laid eggs and holding them still warm from the hen’s body is truly a special treat.  Annabel  laid exquisite dark beige eggs, perfectly oval in shape.  And, ironically, hers was the last egg we found today in the nesting box….

Tonight we dug a deep hole outside of the garden proper in the “bald” area where the coop had been, now stripped of grass from the hens’ constant scratching.  I lifted Annabel out of the box, placed an old white towel around her, and set her in the ground.  She may have been “just a chicken”, but we shall miss her all the same….

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