Find yourself dusting off the books you’ve collected over the years? If you’ve already read them and have a memory issue, you will enjoy them again! I have a friend in Portland, a professor of dentistry, and he purchased a copy of a book he thought he might like, he being a WWII “fan.”
“Fred, did you order this book,” asked Sheila, his wife of 60 plus years?
“Yes,” he answered with some degree of trepidation.
Sheila left the room and returned carrying two other copies of the same book — a book about Auschwitz.
On the other hand, if your memory is exact and complete, the writer Verlyn Klinkenborg, suggests that subsequent readings of favorite books are well worth your time. He writes that familiarity with the plots and their conclusions present readers with the opportunity to proceed at a slower pace, enjoying the journey.
For some light reading during this somber time, “All Creatures Great and Small,” by James Herriot, is offering the perfect anecdote to the news. So, in the spirit of Doctor Herriot, here is a quite belated report on my world of chickens, of whom I used to often write, as I found them dear little creatures when they weren’t pecking each other and fighting.
Currently, I have one rooster. That’s all. Where did the flock go? Our friend, Hector Alvarez, of Hector’s Honey at the farmers’ markets, arrived on a Monday to catch and release them onto his own farm in Windsor. This was scheduled for a Monday in late October but it was bounced off the calendar due to the Kinkade Fire.
So, in November, before the chickens knew their day would be vastly different than any other in their lives, Hector arrived with a set of cages. He caught every bird by reaching up to the rafters and grabbing their feet. Sometimes he was handing me three or four at a time, feet first, and I had to count the number of feet I held before I could pass them on to Martin and Sarah, who opened the cages and assisted them inside, and then uprighting them.
When it was all over I was left with two roosters and one little pet hen, Henny Penny, the Aracauna who lived with the sheep. The silence was eery. All day both human and animal were struck by the lack of clucking and activity in the old chicken yard. When we bought our farm, chickens were the first animals we purchased.
Our reason for taking this extreme step was due to my lack of solving rat population control. Every possible means had been tried, from traps, to electrocution, to poison, to giving up and treating them as unwanted guests at the water and feed bowls.
There is no doubt about it, rats are VERY smart, innovative, talented, and to me, somewhat endearing, similar to squirrels, though I concede squirrels don’t bore holes in the wall and take over the kitchen. They had found their perfect home under the chicken coop with water, feed, shelter, safety.
My three remaining birds lived with the sheep and over the months the two have passed on to heaven knows where. I particularly had a full day of grieving when little Henny Penny died. She had spent her last months in a pen in our kitchen and had taught us a great deal about how to live peacefully, happy and content. From a hen used only to a life shared with a flock of noisy birds, herself at the bottom of the pecking order, she learned to enjoy our fenced in back yard and would jump up the steps to our deck when the sun was going down. She would stand at the glass door, looking inside, awaiting entry to her kitchen pen. Her sleeping place was an old wooden Coca Cola box filled with wood shavings. For a short while the kitchen noises startled her, but not too greatly. Soon nothing fazed her — not even my Black and Decker electric beater with the power of a motor boat, and that’s its lowest speed.
At night, while we were still up, she would simply tuck her head under her wing, like a duck, and block out the light. Three weeks ago she didn’t wake up. She was about 10 years old.
An elderly lady with three dogs and two cats, all equally elderly, asks James Herriot if she will see her animals again when she dies. He thinks for a long minute, aware of the grief and panic in the eyes of the questioner.
He assures her that animals have souls and that he firmly believes she will see her beloved pets in the hereafter. She smiles and is at peace.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.
