Lonely Mrs Red
Good evening folks. This evening I am standing up in the kitchen writing with Genevieve hanging on my back, still awake. The last few nights I have accomplished nothing after dinner for want of coaxing Evie into sleep, that is, for more than a little nap. Matt and I chuckle as we sit down on the floor with her, after each failed attempt at sleep and get out the baby toy basket, again. It’s partly humorous and partly fatiguing, as you’d expect. Her head has just dropped though, so I may get to sit down and write. I suppose I should be grateful that she is falling asleep after 8pm, for anything before would surely be a pre-bed time nap. Last week, I gave her chamomile tea in a bottle to calm her down. She loved it, well, at least the novelty. She took a few two-hour naps, it was a dream. It didn’t take long for me to connect the dots between those long lovely naps and the sleepless nights. Don’t get me wrong, I should not complain. Here I stand in this beautiful, albeit messy, kitchen with the windows wide open listening the crickets screaming, swaying to Putomayo’s Music from the Wine Lands while my chirpy baby loses her will to be awake with every sway of my hips. Her midnight restlessness can put me in an irrationally bad mood, but really, it’s not such a hard life.
Unfortunately, it has been a bit rough for other members of our family this week. Monday night some animal dug its way into our chick pen. It took the hen who was sitting on her three tiny chicks, leaving no remains but the chicks cold and frightened.
Keith patched up the loose ends in that pen. We took the chicks inside and hoped the predator had been satiated, but it hadn’t. Thursday morning we were sitting at the breakfast table and saw a sad and lost looking Keith walk by in the pouring rain carrying a dead Old Mother by the feet over to the compost heap. Innocently we thought, “Poor old hen, she’s lived here over ten years.” “She’s had a good life here,” we assured Jacinta. Then we saw Keith carrying another dead chicken to the compost. Watching Keith out in the pouring rain devoid of his usual self assured glow from our big window we knew something was horribly wrong. The pieces took a while to put together, but it was a chicken slaughter.
All of the chickens who had been safely sleeping on the roost the night before had been dragged out the front door of the chicken pen. Perhaps fourteen chickens were killed by some animal strong enough to push open the gate. Some may have been eaten, but many were just killed, their bodies strewn about the property. The lone survivors were the two clucky hens (this means they are in the mood to be real mother hens and insanely sit on an empty nest because instinct tells them they should be sitting on fertilized eggs) who were in another part of the pen. One hen from the original flock (Keith and Mary bought when they moved here in 1996) happened to take up residence under the house the day before the attack. She is one of the last given a name. Mrs. Red survived, but is going crazy. There are two chicks who sleep in the trees, one of whom is a rooster. They survived. There is one yellow hen who sleeps in the car port who we think is sitting on eggs. She survived. Then we have the three chicks in the cage who now sleep inside at night. None of these lovely survivors lay eggs. There are feathers spread throughout the chicken pen, but no chickens now. It is vacant, with the exception of the two stupid clucky hens who think they are sitting on eggs.
Jacinta did not cry or appear very sad, perhaps more bewildered. She is more focused on the survivors, than the loss. She did say rather too soon, “But Mommy, we need eggs.” What a good non-sentimental little farmer. She is very curious about determining the animal that killed our chickens. (A side note: it is now 9:30pm and Evie is back in my arms nursing, once again, after numerous attempts to put her in her crib. She was just bouncing in Matt’s arms after an energy-filled yogurt feeding.) The best part of the deal for Jess is that she gets to care for the motherless chicks, holding, feeding and bringing them outside every morning and inside every evening in a little cage.
No matter how much we focus on the lucky survivors, it is quite a loss. Keith trumps us all in sadness and guilt, as animals are equals to humans in his book. These chickens were friends, some old and some new, that his chook pen failed to protect. We miss them gathering to dig through compost, or crowd around freshly scattered seed. Matt misses their company while building outside. It is strangely silent in the mornings and afternoons when they used to crow and scratch around outside our door. There is no one to shoo out of my garden. The lonely Mrs. Red was looking for a place to sleep tonight. She watched in envy as the little chicks flew up in the tree, circling round and round but never flapping her wings hard enough to join them. Since the killing, she has never once entered the chicken pen. This makes me think she may actually have slept in the pen that dreadful night and escaped under the house during the slaughter. This would explain her sense in never returning to a place she slept every night for so many years. She came to our door hours after she would have been sleeping last week, just searching. Imagine waking up one morning and every one you knew was gone. I know she is a chicken, but all of the sudden, she is alone when she used to be amongst friends. I think all creatures can experience loneliness.
Although we are always in need of rain, we actually grew tired of it last week. It fills the tank and makes the land sprout with growth, but doesn’t do much for cheering up sad people and chickens. To add to the pain for Keith, his eldest sister had a stroke. It rained so much it actually kept him from driving out to see her right away. Rain also means no playgroup, so instead we celebrated my friend Michelle’s birthday here. Good food and company cheered up our dour mood following the chicken slaughter. Matt missed out because he was teaching. He didn’t mind though, paid work for three days was a good enough reason to be happy. He couldn’t do much work on the veranda in the rain, but managed to secure all of the joists and begin laying down floorboards. So far he has only used leftover recycled lumber from the old church we used for our house. Soon there will be no more, and we’ll actually have to purchase the floorboards. Our cellar is now filled with...rain water, not abundant garden produce. It would be a good swimming hole. This is good to know just in case we never grow much worth preserving.
Regardless of the rain, the girls and I spent some time in the garden. We picked off caterpillars, even researched them in the library, made caterpillar soup, removed strange potato bugs, squashed slugs and anything eating the plants, and even sprayed some homemade concoctions on the plants. Given the information that one must avoid planting tomatoes in the same spot from year to year here (the ground never freezes), I tore out almost every lovely tomato plant I had staked. This one somewhat painful given all of the green tomatoes I was sacrificing, but also a great relief. Imagine handpicking little caterpillars off of over twenty huge tomato plants each day…impossible at this stage in life. The garden looks neater, but there are no sweet cherry tomatoes to eat. I also tore out every borage plant as they were infested with tiny black caterpillars. Matt helped me make big wire tomato cages for the few remaining plants. Today I put them around the young little tomato plants, and there are no caterpillars! It could be the rain, the spray, the handpicking, or just the day. Whatever the reason, I am happy.
Today Jacinta, Genevieve and I ate the first two plums and seven huge strawberries. The corn is taller then Jacinta and kidney beans are growing amidst the beautiful green corn stalks. I have never seen a kidney bean outside of a plastic package. They are just like normal green beans when they are young. I can’t wait to see them in a few months. Pumpkin vines, watermelon vines, zucchini plants, everything has shot up and out from this rain. Little carrot patches that Jacinta planted on her own have shot up out of the weeds. I finally had a chance to pull out the weeds and really discover the brilliance of handing Jacinta a pile of seed and giving her the freedom to do whatever she wanted with them.
Jacinta is learning how to entertain herself better. In the garden she likes to dig and weed, but has a hard time digging in the spot I have approved. She’d rather dig right next to me, disregarding the baby carrot plants underneath her bum. She’ll play hide and seek with Evie and I, but still hasn’t figured out subtle kidding tactics. Genevieve won’t crawl very far to find her. She’ll cross the garden for me, panting like a dog, but I have milk, the trump card. Jacinta also takes pride in entertaining Evie. She plays peek-a-boo with blankets, runs away with items that Evie fancies and makes Evie “chase” her, tries to hold Evie up while she practices standing, and tries to “cuddle” her making sure not to squish her too much. The big sister has learned the art of protecting her castles of blocks from the destructive baby monster and also how to knock her creations down just before Evie has the pleasure of knocking them down.
Although she can do some things in her own, Jacinta desires a playmate at all times. She’ll take whoever she can get and settle with herself if that’s all there is. French days she’s in heaven with all of her friends here and a mom who drops everything to play games with she and her five friends. (This is not the norm!) This week French class was inside. It was difficult to contain their energy inside, but we did it. Keith let us run up and down his hallways acting like birds, fish, and kangaroos. The games we play have been “approved” by young school children and go over pretty well. It’s funny to hear Jacinta tell Matt in English about what we did, “Look! This is mommy’s basket of surprises.” Not only do I get to hear first-hand how she translates my words and what she likes, but it puts me in the place of the parents of the school children I taught.
Genevieve is now standing in the shoes of her big sister about three years ago, literally. She is pulling up on everything, desperate to cling on and walk somewhere. So I thought it might be time for her first real pair of shoes, the old red shoes Jacinta wore. She is also sporting some new shoes from her aunt Lecia, so she can no longer chew on them. Sometimes she is so desperate to stand up that she’ll grasp onto my baggy clothing, end up losing her balance and depantsing me all at once. Genevieve is still bonking her head quite a bit, but gets over it quickly. She crawls very excitedly, sometimes carrying toys in her mouth if she needs to take them along. She has four teeth now, two on top and two on the bottom. Watching Evie munch on an apple is pretty funny as she bites off little bits, sucks the juice out and spits out the bit after she has finished. Her tray is quickly covered in tiny little rejected apple bits.
This weekend we travelled four hours south to visit Matt’s dad and his wife Carolyn in Port Stephens. Evie kept busy for a while with an apple but submitted to sleep out of sheer boredom. Jacinta is a super traveller, content with treats, music, her basket of toys and art supplies. We played an add-on game with her drawing book, but mainly I got to knit. What a treat. Genevieve finds her big sister to be quite god entertainment in the car, thankfully because she is not a normal baby who might sleep a lot in the car.
Visiting Pete and Carolyn is always good fun, but this trip was especially pleasant. They live on the bay, so Pete and I took the girls on a walk along the water’s edge as we always do. Jacinta picks flowers and paperbark, runs in the sand and through the neighbour’s grass. She and Genevieve played around in the wet sand and streams of water left behind at low tide. Evie had showed major signs of fatigue but couldn’t stand to miss out. She wriggled and kicked until I let her out of the carrier. When it was time to get going, she screamed until she was dry and back in the carrier and fell asleep straight away.
Highlights of the trip were many: one was having dinner at their golf club with both girls behaving like angels. Everyone else had Chinese food, and I grabbed the rare opportunity to have Thai food. Matt wanted to scan a bunch of old family photos so we all sat around digging through the past. Another highlight was hearing old family stories; I actually enjoy this, yes. The girls had a great time with all of the extra attention and the thrill of a new place. Genevieve stood up for three seconds and sat right back down, all on her own will. This was surely a first. Lastly, we went on a big dolphin watching boat and it was amazing. Of course, Jacinta was incredibly excited to explore all of the decks on the boat and spot several pods of dolphins in the wild. I had never done anything like it, and I am thirty so I think I was even more thrilled. Evie was so thrilled she slept through most of it. Matt thought it was pretty amazing but was hoping the dolphins might do some tricks for us. Lazy dolphins, they were too busy mating. Oh well.
So life goes on, up and down. Most of our chickens are still gone, but we have a few babies left and a few stunned ones left to tell the tale. We can buy nice eggs at the fruit shop, but there’s none to hope for each morning. Genevieve finally went to sleep at 10:30pm. She may wake up in a few minutes, but I have the satisfaction of having had 90 minutes to myself. I made it to the end of my journal and it’s midnight. I bid you a good night’s sleep and a lovely day filled with hills and valleys, ups and downs, and life, good life.
Peace,
Shana
Unfortunately, it has been a bit rough for other members of our family this week. Monday night some animal dug its way into our chick pen. It took the hen who was sitting on her three tiny chicks, leaving no remains but the chicks cold and frightened.
Keith patched up the loose ends in that pen. We took the chicks inside and hoped the predator had been satiated, but it hadn’t. Thursday morning we were sitting at the breakfast table and saw a sad and lost looking Keith walk by in the pouring rain carrying a dead Old Mother by the feet over to the compost heap. Innocently we thought, “Poor old hen, she’s lived here over ten years.” “She’s had a good life here,” we assured Jacinta. Then we saw Keith carrying another dead chicken to the compost. Watching Keith out in the pouring rain devoid of his usual self assured glow from our big window we knew something was horribly wrong. The pieces took a while to put together, but it was a chicken slaughter.
All of the chickens who had been safely sleeping on the roost the night before had been dragged out the front door of the chicken pen. Perhaps fourteen chickens were killed by some animal strong enough to push open the gate. Some may have been eaten, but many were just killed, their bodies strewn about the property. The lone survivors were the two clucky hens (this means they are in the mood to be real mother hens and insanely sit on an empty nest because instinct tells them they should be sitting on fertilized eggs) who were in another part of the pen. One hen from the original flock (Keith and Mary bought when they moved here in 1996) happened to take up residence under the house the day before the attack. She is one of the last given a name. Mrs. Red survived, but is going crazy. There are two chicks who sleep in the trees, one of whom is a rooster. They survived. There is one yellow hen who sleeps in the car port who we think is sitting on eggs. She survived. Then we have the three chicks in the cage who now sleep inside at night. None of these lovely survivors lay eggs. There are feathers spread throughout the chicken pen, but no chickens now. It is vacant, with the exception of the two stupid clucky hens who think they are sitting on eggs.
Jacinta did not cry or appear very sad, perhaps more bewildered. She is more focused on the survivors, than the loss. She did say rather too soon, “But Mommy, we need eggs.” What a good non-sentimental little farmer. She is very curious about determining the animal that killed our chickens. (A side note: it is now 9:30pm and Evie is back in my arms nursing, once again, after numerous attempts to put her in her crib. She was just bouncing in Matt’s arms after an energy-filled yogurt feeding.) The best part of the deal for Jess is that she gets to care for the motherless chicks, holding, feeding and bringing them outside every morning and inside every evening in a little cage.
No matter how much we focus on the lucky survivors, it is quite a loss. Keith trumps us all in sadness and guilt, as animals are equals to humans in his book. These chickens were friends, some old and some new, that his chook pen failed to protect. We miss them gathering to dig through compost, or crowd around freshly scattered seed. Matt misses their company while building outside. It is strangely silent in the mornings and afternoons when they used to crow and scratch around outside our door. There is no one to shoo out of my garden. The lonely Mrs. Red was looking for a place to sleep tonight. She watched in envy as the little chicks flew up in the tree, circling round and round but never flapping her wings hard enough to join them. Since the killing, she has never once entered the chicken pen. This makes me think she may actually have slept in the pen that dreadful night and escaped under the house during the slaughter. This would explain her sense in never returning to a place she slept every night for so many years. She came to our door hours after she would have been sleeping last week, just searching. Imagine waking up one morning and every one you knew was gone. I know she is a chicken, but all of the sudden, she is alone when she used to be amongst friends. I think all creatures can experience loneliness.
Although we are always in need of rain, we actually grew tired of it last week. It fills the tank and makes the land sprout with growth, but doesn’t do much for cheering up sad people and chickens. To add to the pain for Keith, his eldest sister had a stroke. It rained so much it actually kept him from driving out to see her right away. Rain also means no playgroup, so instead we celebrated my friend Michelle’s birthday here. Good food and company cheered up our dour mood following the chicken slaughter. Matt missed out because he was teaching. He didn’t mind though, paid work for three days was a good enough reason to be happy. He couldn’t do much work on the veranda in the rain, but managed to secure all of the joists and begin laying down floorboards. So far he has only used leftover recycled lumber from the old church we used for our house. Soon there will be no more, and we’ll actually have to purchase the floorboards. Our cellar is now filled with...rain water, not abundant garden produce. It would be a good swimming hole. This is good to know just in case we never grow much worth preserving.
Regardless of the rain, the girls and I spent some time in the garden. We picked off caterpillars, even researched them in the library, made caterpillar soup, removed strange potato bugs, squashed slugs and anything eating the plants, and even sprayed some homemade concoctions on the plants. Given the information that one must avoid planting tomatoes in the same spot from year to year here (the ground never freezes), I tore out almost every lovely tomato plant I had staked. This one somewhat painful given all of the green tomatoes I was sacrificing, but also a great relief. Imagine handpicking little caterpillars off of over twenty huge tomato plants each day…impossible at this stage in life. The garden looks neater, but there are no sweet cherry tomatoes to eat. I also tore out every borage plant as they were infested with tiny black caterpillars. Matt helped me make big wire tomato cages for the few remaining plants. Today I put them around the young little tomato plants, and there are no caterpillars! It could be the rain, the spray, the handpicking, or just the day. Whatever the reason, I am happy.
Today Jacinta, Genevieve and I ate the first two plums and seven huge strawberries. The corn is taller then Jacinta and kidney beans are growing amidst the beautiful green corn stalks. I have never seen a kidney bean outside of a plastic package. They are just like normal green beans when they are young. I can’t wait to see them in a few months. Pumpkin vines, watermelon vines, zucchini plants, everything has shot up and out from this rain. Little carrot patches that Jacinta planted on her own have shot up out of the weeds. I finally had a chance to pull out the weeds and really discover the brilliance of handing Jacinta a pile of seed and giving her the freedom to do whatever she wanted with them.
Jacinta is learning how to entertain herself better. In the garden she likes to dig and weed, but has a hard time digging in the spot I have approved. She’d rather dig right next to me, disregarding the baby carrot plants underneath her bum. She’ll play hide and seek with Evie and I, but still hasn’t figured out subtle kidding tactics. Genevieve won’t crawl very far to find her. She’ll cross the garden for me, panting like a dog, but I have milk, the trump card. Jacinta also takes pride in entertaining Evie. She plays peek-a-boo with blankets, runs away with items that Evie fancies and makes Evie “chase” her, tries to hold Evie up while she practices standing, and tries to “cuddle” her making sure not to squish her too much. The big sister has learned the art of protecting her castles of blocks from the destructive baby monster and also how to knock her creations down just before Evie has the pleasure of knocking them down.
Although she can do some things in her own, Jacinta desires a playmate at all times. She’ll take whoever she can get and settle with herself if that’s all there is. French days she’s in heaven with all of her friends here and a mom who drops everything to play games with she and her five friends. (This is not the norm!) This week French class was inside. It was difficult to contain their energy inside, but we did it. Keith let us run up and down his hallways acting like birds, fish, and kangaroos. The games we play have been “approved” by young school children and go over pretty well. It’s funny to hear Jacinta tell Matt in English about what we did, “Look! This is mommy’s basket of surprises.” Not only do I get to hear first-hand how she translates my words and what she likes, but it puts me in the place of the parents of the school children I taught.
Genevieve is now standing in the shoes of her big sister about three years ago, literally. She is pulling up on everything, desperate to cling on and walk somewhere. So I thought it might be time for her first real pair of shoes, the old red shoes Jacinta wore. She is also sporting some new shoes from her aunt Lecia, so she can no longer chew on them. Sometimes she is so desperate to stand up that she’ll grasp onto my baggy clothing, end up losing her balance and depantsing me all at once. Genevieve is still bonking her head quite a bit, but gets over it quickly. She crawls very excitedly, sometimes carrying toys in her mouth if she needs to take them along. She has four teeth now, two on top and two on the bottom. Watching Evie munch on an apple is pretty funny as she bites off little bits, sucks the juice out and spits out the bit after she has finished. Her tray is quickly covered in tiny little rejected apple bits.
This weekend we travelled four hours south to visit Matt’s dad and his wife Carolyn in Port Stephens. Evie kept busy for a while with an apple but submitted to sleep out of sheer boredom. Jacinta is a super traveller, content with treats, music, her basket of toys and art supplies. We played an add-on game with her drawing book, but mainly I got to knit. What a treat. Genevieve finds her big sister to be quite god entertainment in the car, thankfully because she is not a normal baby who might sleep a lot in the car.
Visiting Pete and Carolyn is always good fun, but this trip was especially pleasant. They live on the bay, so Pete and I took the girls on a walk along the water’s edge as we always do. Jacinta picks flowers and paperbark, runs in the sand and through the neighbour’s grass. She and Genevieve played around in the wet sand and streams of water left behind at low tide. Evie had showed major signs of fatigue but couldn’t stand to miss out. She wriggled and kicked until I let her out of the carrier. When it was time to get going, she screamed until she was dry and back in the carrier and fell asleep straight away.
Highlights of the trip were many: one was having dinner at their golf club with both girls behaving like angels. Everyone else had Chinese food, and I grabbed the rare opportunity to have Thai food. Matt wanted to scan a bunch of old family photos so we all sat around digging through the past. Another highlight was hearing old family stories; I actually enjoy this, yes. The girls had a great time with all of the extra attention and the thrill of a new place. Genevieve stood up for three seconds and sat right back down, all on her own will. This was surely a first. Lastly, we went on a big dolphin watching boat and it was amazing. Of course, Jacinta was incredibly excited to explore all of the decks on the boat and spot several pods of dolphins in the wild. I had never done anything like it, and I am thirty so I think I was even more thrilled. Evie was so thrilled she slept through most of it. Matt thought it was pretty amazing but was hoping the dolphins might do some tricks for us. Lazy dolphins, they were too busy mating. Oh well.
So life goes on, up and down. Most of our chickens are still gone, but we have a few babies left and a few stunned ones left to tell the tale. We can buy nice eggs at the fruit shop, but there’s none to hope for each morning. Genevieve finally went to sleep at 10:30pm. She may wake up in a few minutes, but I have the satisfaction of having had 90 minutes to myself. I made it to the end of my journal and it’s midnight. I bid you a good night’s sleep and a lovely day filled with hills and valleys, ups and downs, and life, good life.
Peace,
Shana
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
12:04 AM
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