Conestogo: Bad day

Today was not a good day in Conestogo. When I woke up this morning, it didn’t feel like a good day but I told myself that it would be one because I would chose to make it one (such notions are never foolish until one looks back on them I suppose). But it left my control after the children and I went down to let out the chickens:

First I noticed that two roosters were sharing the windowsill; which is odd, I thought, because they don’t usually get along … Then Michael opened the door and said, “I see one of the chicks and she’s laying down”; honestly I didn’t know what he meant … Upon opening the barn door my eyes moved from dead bird to dead bird and I tried to make some sense of what I saw. Finally I saw the weasel slink out beneath the chicken’s door and everything fit together.

The little bugger wasn’t done yet either. I opened the chicken’s door and the two remaining Welsummer chickens left the roost to go outside (the rest of the smarter chicken breeds stayed inside, I might add) when I emerged from cleaning up a little, the weasel was wrapped around the Welsummer rooster. The idea of blood lust was something I never truly understood until I witnessed that little rodent’s madness. I tried to catch him, but he scurried away and after an hour’s waiting he didn’t come back.

So, most of my flock is dead. Claire and I have carefully gone all around the roost and plugged every hole so we hope that the weasel won’t be able to get in again.

As I write this I am in surprisingly alright space. When I saw the dead birds about the barn floor my first reaction was, honestly, fatigue. I really didn’t want to deal with this; either in physically cleaning it up or emotionally in burying my chickens, all of whom had names and unique personalities. But, it had to be done, and I did it. In the end, I guess there is some comfort in contending with unhappy events when they happen.