Profound Connections

Wednesday, June 18, 2024

Happy Juneteenth!

In today’s header photo, my fifteen-year-old hen, Welsummer, is attentive to something. There’s no telling what because her eyesight is seriously failing. She’s no longer able to judge distance, is having trouble finding her food, and more than ever she settles into a “resting state.”

When I started noticing all that, my impulse was to begin feeding her by hand. After crushing the yellow of a boiled egg and diluting it with warm water, I filled a chicken syringe. I had to hold Welsummer while trying to open her beak to insert nourishment. She wasn’t cooperative but did enjoy the few drops I got into her beak. I often tried that way of feeding, hoping she’d learn, but the process never enough improved.

The feeding failures became frustrating, and I began questioning all the worrying and struggling against losing a very old hen. One reality is my fondness for her; another is that she’s seriously failing from natural causes.

Years ago, I worked hard to keep a failing hen alive. That bird was much younger than Welsummer is now. A veterinarian had said her condition couldn’t be improved. However, she was receptive to syringe-feeding, and for weeks it seemed she was improving. However, that wasn’t so; she quit accepting nutrition, the inevitable happened.

Losing that hen saddened me and illustrated that when a “chicken’s time” arrives, there’s likely little chance of successfully reversing the reality. These days, with Welsummer, I am thinking about my earlier experience and learning.

Here’s the upshot: Welsummer is healthy but old and failing from natural causes introduced to me by her eyesight loss. Syringe feeding wouldn’t help enough. She might learn to accept a syringe but will pass in her own time. I must work at rearranging my thinking and be willing for reality simply to happen.

Dear Friends: The deeper the bonds with pets, the deeper the grief of losing them. Diana