State of Panic

Dogs and chickens

The sound was a blend between squeak and squawk, a hey, take notice, but not loud enough to fully interrupt the Zoom meditation training blipping from my small computer speaker. I slid my feet into slippers, pedaled to the back door and glanced down to see Violet’s gray toes. Violet and her gray feathers on the mat, weaving back and forth, croaking. 

I open the door.

It opens in. She quiets a bit. If it had been Red One, she’d climb over the sill and aim left, towards the jar of shelled sunflower seeds.

Violet is alone. I glance between the bare lilac branches, across the drive, up the hill. I close the door.

The next noise is much louder, longer, insistent. Distressed and consistent and rapid. I rush this time, skip my slippers, yank open the door. It’s not Violet. It’s one of the buffs and she is in the mouth of a very large white dog. Two big white dogs at the base of our stairs.

My arms fly up - what the fuck! Let her down! Put her down! 

Writing you now, I feel my nervous system revving again. . .

My eyes widen, my mouth opens, my arms gesture, clap, scold, yell. I dart in for shoes and back out at the dogs, who are big, but I am bigger and I am pissed. 

Git out. Go on, git. Git the fuck outta here. 

Chicken on the dirt. 

One dog heads up the hill, the other out down the lane. I chase the one who had Chicken. His easy lope puts him out of my reach. I try saying get over here. Get back here, but he’s absolutely caught my meaning and it is not nice. 

___________

Neighbor says he’s eaten one of theirs. One dog is a flock herder by breeding, the other eats birds. 

The dogs have traipsed a mile and a half out to what had been our chicken’s open run of the place. 

Now winter, and the groomer has rolled out to flatten forest trails, temps dip to zero F, snow has been plowed, and Neighbor is out looking for them. “I worry they might get shot,” he explains to my partner. “Or caught in a hunter’s trap.” Valid concerns.

Jim sees the dogs out on the highway and herds them home. The next day, they are down the road at the gas station. “They’re having a time of it,” he shares.

____________

Heat rolls off me and at the dog, who lolls just out of reach, aware of my fury. My cognition comes online too late to realize I may have a different outcome if I hadn’t yelled GIT, which they did heed. I cannot find any of our eight birds. The dogs lope off west, into the forest. 

I slip down the hill. Shit. shitshitshit. Am I going to find bodies? Feathers? Here, biddies. Cluckcluckcluckcluck, I sing and call and my panic is dizzying my vision. Tears pebble cheeks. I grab the sunflower seeds and shake the jar.

First come the babies and one Red from high up the east hill near the old apple trees; they clatter down. I coax them to the coop with treats and lock them in. No other bodies are there. 

I look under the back stairs, where they escaped the goshawk attack. The yelling and arm waving is the same. I’m learning how to protect my girls. 

I cannot find the other four. Jim is in town. I climb the hill in loose boots and up into the shadows where they sometimes hunt and scratch and peck. No one. No feathers. No scratches. No sounds except my breath in huffs. 

When I find her, she is up the back deck stairs, which are tall and steep and have never been explored by the chickens before. She won’t let me approach. 

I offer seeds. No.

Water. No. She hunches in on herself and scoots away. Slow. 

Oh, Tude. I whisper. She is missing feathers, skin, a hunk from her left leg. 

Friends ask: Don’t you have trouble with …

There is sometimes a pause. With what?  Wild animals? My smile is a smirk these days, after the dogs. Ah, no. Nope.

Violet explores her first snow