31 March 2014

every morning while P was away i would come back from my run and go out the back to let the chickens down. they would come tumbling down the ramp, clucking and looking around. then i would take a shovel and throw up the soil and wood chips into a heap. they would peck around the shovel without any fear and settle to pecking and scratching on the heap, making small sounds. on satuday i hung some stale rounds of flat bread on strings for them to peck at a later i let them out. it was a beautiful day, the warmest of the year. as i was coming in to get something, M and S came back from TKD. S had been won a silver medal in poomsae but got kicked in the jaw in a fight. M was looking at transport routes to go up to The Roundhouse. S called to be picked up from Megan's and HuaHua arrived. you went to pick up S, expecting to come straight back, but you had to stay for a sommunity arts event. By the time you got back it was dark. As you got out of the car you said to S you would go put up the chickens. As you walked out into the back you remembered you had left them down. you called to S. you thought mayber they have put themselves up in the coop. you looked in. it was empty. then you saw the body. then it was terrible. you got light and found the three bodies, still warm, so big also, the one ripped open showing a part formed egg.

when p came back on sunday form Hyderabad you buried the three bodies in a box in the ground. the body of the fourth hen, Sketch, has not been found. the beauty and liveliness of theose chickens is something exemplary to you, and the sudden and absolute extinction is a terrible event. it unleases waves of suffering and deep sadness. in fact they did go into the house because there was a drop of blood there becuase they thought they were safe there, because the door is secure. but you left the door open. the fox came in up the ramp into the house and took them. on it took and the others it also killed, leaving them lying one headless, on ripped open, in ripped massed of feathers covered in dirt.

in the yard, the yard was full of the little scrapes they had made all through that late afternoon and evening when they were out, when you forgot them.