fox + hens

Now that I am working from home I keep my ears tuned to the sounds of farm animals. Chickens have a particular distress sound, and--rarely--a pain sound. Or at least I construe it that way... Those distress and pain sounds launch me into the air and out the door as fast as my feet will take me.

Yesterday at dusk I was in my studio tinkering and heard the distress and pain sounds, and the rooster's alarm. I ran outside to find one bird down and the fox sliding away with another in its mouth. I shouted, waved, the piles of snow white feathers in the grass making me feel sad and guilty for exposing these birds to my learn-by-doing experiment in farming. There by a clump of irises was the white bird we call Ed Koch, crumpled and heaving. I ran to her, and she lurched toward me on the grass, perhaps her legs were broken -- suffering. My thoughtless innocent dependable hen was suffering. Her beady eye was intent, probably seeing me as another predator or maybe as her deliverer. I said, "Here, let me help you!" and I picked her up by her tender slim neck and swung her sharply. The neck bones crunkled like loose knuckles, and she was dead. I laid her down by the hen coop, loose flesh and white feathers and very little blood. But blood = suffering.

Why couldn't the fox just kill and take? Why does the fox leave a woeful dying mess behind? At least the birds of prey pounce and depart with no waste left behind. I was washing dishes the evening before last, again at dusk, and gazing out the window into the garden where a lone hen poked and scratched. Suddenly a bird shot out of the sky, hit the ground with a burst of feathers, one moment of scuffle, and the hen and bird were gone. I cried out for my husband: "John! Something's at the hens!" We ran to the garden together and examined the feathers that remained. A barred owl, he thought.

Yesterday evening's fox had run around the corner of the house with the second bird in its mouth, crying feebly. I chased, and we came to a standoff by the road. I thought the fox had succeeded in killing this bird and I was prepared to let it take the meal away to its kits, but the fox was more cautious than I and dropped the bird, tufts of feathers loose in the grass, and ran across the highway into the bushes alongside the river.

The second bird was more dead, perhaps dead and just twitching, but I couldn't be passive in that moment and I wrung her neck, too, just to be sure. Once again that narrow, liquidy tube of warm bones in my hands like prayer beads and cooked pasta in a velvet sock. Ahhh... when did I become capable of this?

I realized that I was shocked when I found myself carrying the second dead bird by its broken neck instead of upside down by its sturdy feet. I took the carcass across the road to the river verge, crying, "Here fox!" and threw the bird into the weeds where I thought the fox would find it. its dead wings fluttered in the air as if it were alive. One bird to compost, one bird to feed foxes.

That fox is honey-colored, fat and fluffy, not at all cute, very quick and shy yet bold. It knows our farm is a dependable source of fresh chicken. I have imagined shooting it. Our neighbors say, "If you're going to have a farm, you have to have a gun." And they are right -- there have been a handful of times when a sick or injured animal must be put down and those neighbors' .22 followed by a knife in the throat is the only merciful, ethical set of tools to address the needs of that moment.

If I get a gun I will have to practice and become very good. I have no anger toward the predators. I don't want to punish them, only stop them from owning my farm as their hunting grounds.