Category Archives: blue funks

Chicken Hawk Down

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Jack and I lost our first chicken to the hawk that’s been circling since June. When it first attacked, we drove it off because we happened to be in the yard. Then we put up gauze strips to blow from the trees, reflective tape on the clothesline, a mirror atop the coop so the hawk would see another bird if it dove there.

We counted on the natural cover of trees, shrubs, and the brush pile to keep the chickens safe, and we set out two plastic owls, which we moved every day.

For awhile. We saw the hawk occasionally, but as the chickens grew calmer, so did we. Things got relaxed. In November, a headless dove left outside the coop door overnight gave a godfather-esque feeling to the warning that it was quiet, professor, TOO quiet.

I was gone for a week. The weather was bitter cold. The shredded gauze tangled in trees, the reflective tape fell down, and the owls were buried in snow.

“I can only find three chickens,” Jack said last night. This was not super unusual. Sometimes the one the others picked on most decided she’d prefer a tree roost. We acquired two banty girls just a couple of months ago from my parents–they took up residence under their holly bush–and those two prefer tree roosts, so we didn’t worry too much.

This morning, though, when Jack took hot breakfast out, she didn’t appear. (Hot breakfast for a chicken means replenishing the heated water bucket so they always have access to water.)

He shook the grubs jar, a sure-fire treat draw for all the backyard birds. Nope.

I knew what had to be done, and sure enough I found her several minutes later, looking very like a patch of unmelted snow. She’d attempted to take cover under a bush, but the hawk dove right through the thin winter cover. I doubt she had more than a moment of fear before it was all over.

We left the body because, put bluntly, now the hawk will pay attention to the easy pickings for a couple of days. That’s how long it will take our new handy dandy portable chicken run to get here. Think chain mail tent. We know the girls will love it, and we won’t feel this sense of guilt again.

People with farms accept losses, yes. These girls are, as Jack says, pets with benefits. We like the eggs, but we like the girls more. So we’re accepting full moral responsibility for their future safety.

And you know that circle of life thing, we accept that all creatures have to eat? Yeah, no. If I could catch that hawk, I’d kill him with my bare hands. I’ve thrown several rocks at him as he waits in the tall tree beyond our fence. Too high, my aim is too bad. If only vibes could kill. Circle of life, my tail feathers. Die, you bastard.

Holding the Space for Crankiness

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Friends used to say “hold the space” and I wasn’t sure where it came from or what it meant. According to the Urban Dictionary, it is the new modern term for being present for someone, listening to them. Listening is an old word. But still a powerful one.

photo by Philip Hiscock

I’m going to suggest here that we hold space for each other to be cranky. In the last wee while, I’ve seen college educated, lovely people–therapists, professors, homemakers, you name it–turn purple with rage over the smallest of unintended slights or inconveniences. In a world full of very real threats (police shootings, pandemics, and a few others) we’re getting mad because someone forgets to put ketchup packets in the bag.

(Apparently there’s a shortage of that, too.)

Crankiness is ugly. It’s childish. We’ve turned into mousetraps baited and waiting for someone else to set us off so we can snap at them. And while the rulebook for how we entered the health crisis hasn’t even been finalized, we are now starting to emerge from it with no plan whatsover. Will a buzzer sound? Do schools start up–wait, are they shut down again? In this brave new era, it would be easy to let “devil take the hindmost” replace the Golden Rule.

Can I affirm that you deserve to be testy? Feel free to hold your breath and turn blue until you get what you want–or, more likely, pass out. But most of us carry Naloxone and smelling salts, so it’s okay. We can’t get you what you want but we can sit by you while you cry bitter tears of baby anger because your balloon went up to the sky without you. We lost a lot of stuff this year. Worse, we lost a lot of people this year. Not a one of us isn’t carrying some form of grief.

Grief doesn’t come in sizes.

Could we take a moment to affirm grief for each other? You get to be sad about you’re sad about. Ignore those trying to spread daisy print gingham over everything, demanding you remember 24/7 to be grateful. Beat your fists against the table. Demand sage instead of onion dressing on your turkey. It doesn’t mean we’re not grateful for the turkey. There have to be some steam valves to let out what happened to us. Substituting one thing for another is valid. And perhaps safer.

Primal screaming was a communal thing last year. Primal screams get more respect than irritability. How could we not be cranky when we’ve spent a year exposing the nerves of our underbellied lives, trying to hold onto things, trying to regain things, trying not to care about things….. Crankiness might even mean we’re healing, like the itch in the scab over the wound. Once lanced, the poison dissipates without harm.

Be petty for five minutes. Your friends will hold space; then you get to do it for them. (Try not to do it in a really public setting, though. Your friends group is smaller than you think. Stick to them.) If we do run across an irritable person out there in social media land, could we just give them a either a kind wave, or a wide berth? Give them some space. They need it.

And once that’s done, we can get back to helping people. And posting memes on Facebook and calligraphy signs on our house walls about the gratitude we were supposed to feel this whole time.

Let it out. Hold space for each other to let it out. That will help it go away.