Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
In the morning after chores I feed Moon, and while he is digesting his food, I meditate for twenty minutes. This morning as my brain was twinkling, the chickens screamed in panic, Moon barked and ran to the door, and I very reflexively jumped out of my meditation and ran to open the door for Moon. We bounded across the barnyard in the direction the chickens were running away from, and there on the ground was a mass of red and white feathers. A few feet further there were red tail feathers everywhere. Moon was far ahead of me on the trail, up the road and into the woods, with me ouching my way behind him in stocking feet. As a Ford pick-up truck approached, I realized I wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Earlier in the morning I had been harvesting garlic and got my shirt sleeves all wet and muddy. So before I sat down to meditate I took my shirt off. Now I ran to the barn, ducked in until the truck passed, then ran to the house to put my shirt on. All the while freaking out that Moon was on the loose without me at the heavy traffic hour on our road.
Properly dressed, I ran back to where I left Moon and heard him running through the underbrush of the forest making wide circles around the scent of the fox. Then up the road in the sun a battered chicken walked out of the trees, looked both ways, and crossed the stretch of gravel into an open field, in the direction of home. She looked dazed. Most of her tail feathers were missing, and she had broken feathers on her wings where the fox must have had her in his mouth.
Moon leapt into the clearing to find me, on fire with excitement. He was the hero of the day — maybe the week. I felt pretty smug myself, training this ten-month-old puppy to hear chicken distress, rush to the rescue, trail the scent of the fox, and do it fast enough to save a chicken already in the jaws of death. We herded the damaged hen home and Moon had osso bucco for breakfast.
Tags: Chickens, Dog, farming, fox, Sustainability