User blog:Eyota/I miss those times

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but, you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor should you want to."

- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Kessler

Hawk 1
Hawk was in the first batch of 4 chickens we ever had at my farm. She was a black sex-link hen and was fairly large, being one of the top chickens in the pecking order. She had a good egg production and personality, and I remember she had a rasp in her croaky 'bock.' Her death was a horrible one. My father forgot that he had let the chickens out, and, in his mistake, had let Lucky and Maggie (our two dogs) out in the morning and left them out. While the other three chickens managed to hide and get away, terrified and ducking together behind the coop, still as could be- Hawk was not so lucky. She had been chased across our five-acre lawn and killed. When we found her, Lucky had snapped her neck and there was blood everywhere. That was the end of Hawk.

Fox, Eagle, Chipmunk, Hawk 2, and seven others
These 11 chickens were a big loss to the family. Our coop had just begun to grow and we had just purchased some baby chicks and introduced them to the small three-chicken flock.

I remember the day like it was yesterday, even though it was years ago.

Lucky and Maggie were loose, and had pushed their way into the coop.

They killed all of them.

I remember running as fast as I could to the coop and grabbing lucky, hauling him back through my tears. I remember him slipping out of his collar to go back and make sure that Fox was dead because she had twitched.

I remember my dad and my brother hauling both big dogs into one small, cramped cage and nearly shooting them.