Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [122]
When Fritz tore up the cold frame, I flat lost it. When he killed the chickens, I felt something colder. I immediately flashed to the day I got off the school bus and found Dad stringing up dead sheep on the corncrib. Several of the sheep were horribly wounded, the flesh gnawed from their back legs, gaping chunks torn from their hams. Snags of wool hung loose from their bellies. I remember the bright red meat exposed, and the darker red of the blood in the wool, and I remember my father’s grim face. “Dogs,” he said. His deer rifle was leaning against the corncrib. First he shot the dogs; then he shot the sheep, one by one. A few were already dead, but some of the most grievously wounded were still alive and had been trying to escape the dogs by pulling themselves along on their front legs. One sheep was dead without a mark on her. “Shock, I think,” said Dad. He was hanging them to be skinned, butchering them being the only salvageable option.
Nothing was so despised in the country as a dog that killed livestock. A coyote might kill your sheep one or two at a time, but when dogs get started, they don’t stop. For Dad this was more than cruelty, it was destruction of property, putting his livelihood at risk. The dogs belonged to the neighbors just up the road. They were newcomers to the neighborhood. Dad went up there to tell them what had happened, and what he had done. He was straightforward but gentle about it. When we first moved to the farm we had a dog named Sam, and Sam had run over to the Andy Dunn place and killed Andy’s sheep. Dad has been on the other end of the conversation.
When I recall the look on Dad’s face that day, I realize he was facing a serious economic blow. That is hardly the case with our chickens, but man. We liked those silly birds. And Little Miss Shake-N-Bake…Amy was sad but composed. The killing happened at dusk, so in the morning I took her out and we tried to reconstruct the scene. “He killed my two favorite chickens,” said Amy, picking through feathers. I wasn’t sure which of the other chickens she meant, but I knew better than to interrupt. “I miss Little Miss Shake-N-Bake the most.” She ran in the house, but then returned. “I put two of her feathers in my memory box!”
Jane continues her attempts to convey herself, knitting her brow and squealing meaningfully when we get face-to-face. We are still on a stretch of enforced insomnia as she continues teething. One night I find myself driving to Eau Claire in the middle of the night to buy a tube of Anbesol. By the time I’m back she has fallen asleep. As with any baby problem, we’re getting lots of free advice. Some of it we try—for instance, letting her chew on frozen rags. Some we don’t try, like the pioneer method of rubbing brandy on the baby’s gums—although I’m currently rethinking that one: After a speaking engagement during which I mentioned the teething and the fact that my wife was at home holding down the fort with a bawling baby, a man approached and introduced himself as a pediatrician. “Here’s what you do: soak a rag in brandy and rub it on the baby’s gums…” and I thought, Yeah, yeah, but then he said, “…and then give the rest of the bottle to Mom!”
Less than a week after the dog attack, we’ve lost another chicken. One of the Barred Rocks. I was working in the office and saw the birds down around the pigpen. I happened to look up just as the Barred Rock went in the brush behind the trash-burning barrel, and she simply never returned. When the other hens wandered back up to the yard without her, I went to check for feathers but found nothing. A fox? A fisher? A wrong turn? I guess I’ll never