A Happy Buoy and a Mourning Mom

Bobbing around in the hot tub

We needed a fun activity tonight (above),

to distract us from the day's grief (below):

An Eulogy

Fraulein Biff

Born: May 1, 2006

Died: May 18 (or 19), 2008

Fraulein Biff left us for the Great Chicken Roost some time between yesterday afternoon and this morning. I went out to the coop to give the chickens some kitchen scraps and Lafawnduh came scurrying out. Oddly, Fraulein Biff didn’t move a feather from where she lay in the corner under the coop. I thought she was cooling off in the shade. Except she wasn't breathing. I got closer to look and could tell right away that she was dead. Dead. I couldn’t even admit it at first. How could she be dead? She was in the prime of chickenhood. With daylight hours increasing, she was up to one large, pastel blue-green egg almost every day.

Fraulein Biff was poultry emotion. The way she hunched down and let us stroke her feathers; her quick scuttle to the opening screen door in hopes of kitchen scraps. I fondly wiped her poop off the deck. Briton happily raked the yard back to order after she’d been scratching under the trees for a day. Talmage’s first word was “chicken”.

I didn’t dare touch the fowl corpse, at first. When I did, it was with a gloved hand, angling and tugging her out from under the coop. That was the most difficult part of the process. I stuffed the stiff bird into a Winco paper sack, noticing her closed eyelids. I’d never seen them closed before. Out of respect, I placed her in the garage so the neighbor cats couldn’t eat her. And what do you do with a dead chicken? Over the phone, at work, Briton said, “Fire up the grill!”

Fraulein Biff lived a full, if short life. As an araucana chick, she freely roamed on the Baxter Estate. She was very sociable, spending the long summer hours under the grape arbor with any one of several Wyandottes, Leghorns, or Feather Footed Chocins. Of the 28 chicken brood, only she and Lafawnduh made the cut to move to the “new” house. She adapted well to her new surroundings.

When Briton came home, he looked me in the eye and said, “You can’t hide the truth!” For some odd reason, I couldn’t stop smiling. How unfeeling could I be? In the face of such a loss, I found myself grinning from ear to ear. Because although I will miss Fraulein’s curious eyes looking into our living room through the sliding glass door, I’m not going to miss worrying about her being cooped up, or, on days I let her out, worrying about the safety of the Great Cantaloupe and the other plants struggling to get a foothold in the raised-bed garden. There will be less stress wondering if the neighbors are ready to call the HOA on us when the chickens are extra clucky in the early morning.

Fraulein Biff was a superb chicken. Excellent, you might say, in all aspects eggcept one, of which we will never know. Because what did we have for dinner tonight? Beef.

We loved you, Fraulein.