A fox took my hens last month. “All my pretty chickens … at one fell swoop,” as Macduff says in Macbeth, though, of course, Macduff is talking about his actual children, not bantams. They were very pretty indeed, though, my girls.
Weeks later, I’m still finding feathers. I cleared the bulk of the colourful ones the next day with a leaden heart: five piles marking the demise of each of my five beloveds. The tiny speckled gang-leader girls, Eris and Faustina, glossy goth-black Josephine, broody, petrol-iridescent Stella and stoic beige-bearded Daphne, the flock sentry, usually alert to any threat. Was she caught off guard on a balmy early evening, distracted by a worm, or a scrap with a magpie? I try to stop speculating, imagining, blaming myself for going out, for not keeping them safe. But their downy, impossibly soft under-feathers have lingered: I find them snagged on bushes, tumbling across the straw-dry grass, gathering in small drifts on the bristles of the doormat. They keep ambushing me.
I shove them in my pocket, then add them to the small handful I’ve put on my office shelf: a tiny shrine for such a little grief. I’m mourning what would barely constitute the contents of a KFC family feast bucket and with the near-infinite amount of suffering out there, it seems self-indulgent to feel so sad. But as any hen keeper, hamster owner or budgie lover will tell you, those small bodies can be receptacles for a huge amount of love. I can still feel the weight and warmth and particular shape of each of my hens, all that fluff, their fast bird hearts beating against mine.
I shouldn’t get more hens; it makes no sense. The fox knows where the all-you-can-eat buffet is now, so I’ll need to be infinitely more vigilant. Bird flu is devastating and has taken the fun out of backyard chicken-keeping for much of the year. It’s hard to go away, too, when you’re tied to feathery tyrants. But the stupid, sore heart wants what it wants: six more are coming next week.
• Emma Beddington is a freelance writer
• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
