It was about nine am. The scene looked eerily similar to
other ones I’ve seen. White feathers mingled with old hay and dust on the barn
floor, a sure sign of an attack. Chickens are locked up at night to prevent
this from happening, but somewhere along the line this hen had decided to leave
the safety of the hen house and raise a clutch of her own without the added
safety. We didn’t even realize that she had a nest elsewhere until it was too
late.
Something had carried off the hen, leaving nothing behind
but a few wisps of white. It looked like the barn cats had gotten the chicks.
Sunday was shaping up to be a bad day.
It hadn’t been a raccoon, because the hen had been taken. It
almost had to be a fox, but she had been on the floor in the same stall as the
barn dog. How did a fox get in? WTF, Milk Dud? Worst barn dog ever.
Captain America, my dad, and I pondered this as we searched
in vain for more clues, or maybe an injured hen. It was then that I noticed the
sound, niggling on my nerves. Was it a barn swallow? Did they have chicks yet?
But no, it was the insistent peeping of a chick in a horse feeder, across the
barn from the massacre. Had she hatched the chicks in stall seven then? Only to
have a few leave the nest and she flee the safety to protect them in stall two?
It seemed to be so. I wound my fingers around the tiny balls of yellow fluff
and gingerly cradled them close. One of them had already passed away, frozen to
death; but one was healthy and the other wasn’t quite gone yet. I knew just
what to do.
I ran towards the house, “MOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!” I sprinted up
the stairs and shoved the handful of chilled chick at her. “I found baby
chicks. The momma is missing. Warm these up!”
“What?” She blinked at me and then started examining the
golden fluff.
“He needs warmed up. The one is okay, but the other is
probably dying. I’m going to see if I can find the hen.”
“Yeah. I think he is dead.”
“No he’s not. He blinked.”
“Okay give them here.” She promptly shoved them under her
shirt. You learn quickly as a woman on a farm that the best place to revive
cold newborns is in your cleavage. It doesn’t matter what they are: kittens,
puppies, chicks… okay calves and foals wouldn’t really fit, but I digress.
I couldn’t find the hen anywhere. It was starting to look
more and more like a fox in the horse barn was our culprit. CA and I ran to the
feed store for chick starter, and I fought the urge to buy another chick to
keep the one little peeper company because I was pretty certain that even the
power of nestling in a brassiere wouldn’t revive the other one.
I got home and ran upstairs with my load of chick probiotic
and feed only to find mom still in bed. “Thank God. Set up a brooder. I can’t
stay in bed all day!” She then pulled down her collar to show two happy little
chicks curled up and warm.
“Maybe you should just wear them in a tank top? They would
be so happy, and you could use your hands, momma chicken!” She glared at me. “Okay,
okay. I’ll find stuff to set up a brooder.”
So, back out to the barn I went in search of a heat lamp and
some sort of chick container, but what did I hear? A soft “peep, peep, peep”
came from the roof of the tack room. I wrestled a ladder around and what did I
find at the top? Another freaking chick. I scooped him up and ran him back
inside the house. How in the hell did he wind up on top of the tack room?
I tried to shove him under one of the other hens, but she
glared at me and then fled like she had no idea what to do with a baby. Such
great mothering instinct…
Back in the house we introduced chick three to his siblings
in the mineral tub turned brooder. Mom hung the heat lamp off of her inversion
table and fretted over their temperature. My tank top suggestion was turned
down, again.
Thinking my good deeds for the day done, I went over to the
Hill to meet CA and fix the seeder that I broke two weeks ago. We even got the
bonus of meeting neighbors who were four wheeling on land that they thought was
theirs, which wasn’t. After finishing up with all that CA left to tend the MO
farm, and I started feeding. Mom and dad offered dinner, and we ran in town. So
it was almost eight pm when we got home and I was walking towards Guilty Grin
with full feed bucket in hand when I hear a very faint “peep, peep, peep”
coming from the wall. Yes, the wall. The SOLID WOOD WALL AT THE WHOLE OTHER END
OF THE FREAKING BARN. WTF?!
I ran in and grabbed a flashlight and drug the ladder down
the aisle way to peer into the tiny crack between the wooden stall wall and the
tin outer wall of the barn.
And there was a barn swallow.
And a chick.
Fuck.
I ran back in and told mom and dad that there was a bird
stuck in the wall, but it would require property damage to get it out. Bless
her soul, my mom looked up from her bedroom brood box and her response was to
ask my dad to go out and take a look: “take the siding off, it’s falling down
anyway.” Which it isn’t, except for the down spouts that I ripped off with the
manure spreader while I was in high school because I have no spatial reasoning
ability whatsoever. So, at 8:30 last night we were ripping the siding off a horse
barn to rescue a chick trapped in the wall. Still not exactly sure how he got all the way over there.
That’s farm life.
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