Chicks

by Jane Killingbeck--

I'm done with feeling like a murderer now. But, on Saturday evening as I held the baby chick in my hand, still warm, but very definitely dead, its little stomach squashed and blood seeping from its tiny vent, I felt a dreadful guilt; however much I reasoned with myself that the mother hen might have trodden on the chick anyway; it does happen; but my curiosity and excitement had led me to interfere three times during that day of the hatching, going looking to see how many chicks had emerged.

I was careful of course, and the mother hen knows me well so she wasn't upset, but the plain truth is that my disturbing her meant she had to rearrange herself on the eggs, and that is more than likely the reason this poor little baby got squashed; and consequently had no life beyond being curled within the confines of the egg, and then the few breaths it took to give it the energy to tap its way out of its shell.

 

My inability to contain my curiosity had probably led to a completely unnecessary end to one chick's life.I was disgusted with myself.

I had forgotten how lovely it is to have chicks hatching, to oversee this whole amazing process of life beginning; it is at least 20 years since I last kept hens, when I lived in Kerry, and before that in England, where I had Muscovy ducks too. They fly around looking like pterodactyls, quite beautiful in their strange ugliness.

In Kerry I was living in a council cottage in Sneem, still determined to have some hens in my back garden, after moving into the village from out in the mountains; but one day I came home to find them all lying dead or half dead around the place, a local dog having got in and slaughtered them. I sat among the bloody remains of my beautiful birds and howled my sorrow, and that was the end of my poultry keeping, until now.

So two days ago, in the evening, my broody hen was having her daily half an hour pottering around the garden. I took the opportunity to pick up an egg, remembering that sometimes you can hear a chick trying to get out and, to my astonishment, so it was; there was a cheeping from inside, so loud I almost dropped the egg; I hadn't really expected anything to hatch until next week…

I must have got the calculations wrong. I picked up more and five out of the six of them were either cheeping or the tapping of a little beak could be heard, its owner anxious to get out.

I collected the hen and placed her gently back on her eggs, shut the door and came in to make tea, grinning idiotically, full of a lightness of being, practically skipping with delight.

Getting out of bed the next day I went straight out to see if there were any chicks; I could hear cheeping even before I opened the door of the shed; so I gently felt around under the hen, who was making warning noises at me, but not very convincingly, and sure enough a little black chick; so completely adorable, a cliché of course, and yet also a miracle.

I knew I shouldn’t' investigate further but curiosity got the better of me and I lifted the hen up to find another egg almost hatched and three others with little holes busily being made from inside.

I put her back on the nest and left her be, but all I could think of during the day was the burgeoning life emerging inside that shed, the eggs cracking open in response to the patient tapping of little beaks from within, where their owners’ world was becoming too tight to move and there was nothing left to nourish them.

 

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And now, there are four chicks cheeping with new life under their mother, while I hold this little one, and feel the enormity of life and death. And the definiteness of it; and out of my shame I wish now to at least put this small dead being to rest, in a way that is fitting; and I can't decide whether I should leave the body out among the plants in my garden, to be eaten by a rat or maybe smaller creatures, or whether burial would be more decent. I lay her down easy in the flower bed between the Wild Marjoram and the Sedum, and go inside.

All evening it is on my mind and I do not try to dismiss my thoughts, my remorse, my conflicted decision about the little corpse; it feels to me that in grieving for this little creature I am doing penance; rather than just moving on uncaring; it seems necessary to be paying attention, and in the end while my bath is running, in the early hours of the morning I go out to look, taking a torch, and all I can see is slugs and woodlice and other insects, feasting on the frail body; and although I recoil, I also know all is well; it is as it should be that her body is now feeding other bodies.

So is the way throughout the natural world; it is only us who hide from the visceral reality of worms eating our flesh; though now I think of the sky burials that are perhaps still practiced in the remoteness of Tibet, and the Towers of Silence in India, where the Pareses leave out the bodies of their dead for the vultures to pick clean, in accordance with their Zoroastrian faith.

I go to bed more reconciled to the events of the day.

In the morning I look again between the Sedum and the Marjoram, while the kettle is boiling for my morning tea and there is nothing left of the little bird at all.

I spend too much of the day almost hypnotized, watching as the hen gets used to minding her brood and the four chicks begin to enjoy life in all its fullness; food, water, play, sun, and the warmth and security of hiding snug under their mother’s wings.

I mourn no more.