Goodbye, Hennessy, Goodbye

I had a chicken named Hennessy. She died, she died.

My hen didn't come home from the vet's yesterday. It looks like she had leukosis, cancer, and there would have been no cure. She spared me the hard decisions by giving up ten minutes before I got back to the vet. Which is in character; she was an unassuming and sweet chicken. She really, really enjoyed snails.

I cried. I definitely cried. Lately I've been more in love with having chickens than ever. Camilla is lonely now, and might have contracted Hennessy's illness. I'd like to raise a couple of new chicks, but I'm not sure yet whether they, too, would be at risk.

She had been sick for many months. (I didn't mention it in these virtual pages because, picture it: "Wa, my back hurts, and also did I mention, wa poultry disease and wa, wa life is terrible..." I'm not trying to be a Jewish stereotype.) I had taken her twice to a piece of shit vet who popped her a bunch of pills with barely a glance at her.

I was desperately reading The Chicken Health Handbook, which was full of pictures of diseased guts and paralyzed chickens. For many diseases listed, the "Treatment" section said: "None; cull." Maybe someday I'll be enough of a hardened chicken keeper to take that. There was a time, after all, when this passage from a favorite gardening book would puncture my heart: "Many people leave small beets in the ground in spring hoping they will get bigger, but they will go to seed instead, and then die."

I finally found a good vet yesterday morning, when things were looking dire. She couldn't save Hennessy, but I appreciated her compassion. She broke me the bad news so gently as Crim's cell was dying on the drive over. When we got there, we said our goodbyes. The nurses had laid Hennessy out on two folded white towels, her head resting on one like a little angel chicken. Surely the best mortuary services any chicken could hope for.

The vet was able to give Hennessy some relief and she was eating and drinking eagerly just before she died. So I sent her to roost with a full crop.

Goodbye, honey.

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