not to say that i have not been exposed to death before moving out into the country and having animals. i have. but it was people that i love and the occasional dead animal on the road. something about being in the country and having animals, i guess, increases your chances of seeing it and changed my perspective of it in certain aspects.
since living here, i have seen midnight being a cat. she likes to chase down a field mouse, literally play the cat and mouse game, killing it then finally eating it. ALL of it. crunching on the bones in the process. not to be cruel or morbid, but i've watched her. i've had conversations with farmer dad about the nature of animals and survival- how the lion kills the baby zebra to feed it's family. death happens. i've seen the head eaten off of a rabbit too by her. she is a country hunter cat. i am proud of her and i definitely appreciate her hunting abilities, even though it involves the death of another creature. that sounds cruel, i don't mean to be. it's a part of nature though and i respect that part of it. know what i mean? i've seen a rabbit who died because he/she got stuck in the fence. simply dead. i've seen a dead mouse hanging in the tree and this other little guy who got stuck in the a hole of the shed door. it was unable to get out. so, so sad! not being a mouse fan, but being a animal loving vegetarian i had a dilemma. (long, long story short, it died). i've seen frogs accidentally squished in the door and i have found them dead in the car. never even knowing that they were in there until it was too late.
when we got the babies girls, snow white died almost immediately after we got her out of the box in our hands. it was definitely a somber moment. here we are early one morning, our family of 4 still in our pjs in the new barn celebrating the life and arrival of these beautiful fluffy cayuga baby ducks, whose beaks aren't even as big as my pinkie fingernail, and then we see one struggle and die. how do you explain that to growing farmer boys who witness that moment? except that death is a part of life. it is sad, really sad and it's ok to cry, but we still have to be happy for the other ducks that we have. the next day ying died and the day after susie. it was a horrible awful feeling, holding a dead baby duck whose life had yet to be lived dead in my hands. it was a very weird heebee feeling. know what i mean? i know it is just a duck, but it's a duck. it's a life.
today we saw death again. farmer dad went out to take care of the girls this morning. he said that all the ducks came out and he was collecting the eggs when he noticed a duck in one nesting box. sometimes the girls like to stay in there longer, but that wasn't the case today. in the box, he found mr holyle dead. he checked her over to see if she had any wounds but there was nothing. she was gone like that. it's the weirdest thing and sad too. why did this perfectly healthy young duck die? farmer dad was in the orchard all day hanging out with the ducks and taking care of the trees. no one looked or acted suspicious or weird. everyone was fine last night when we put them into the barn. but today she is no more. no more flock of 27 that i was rejoicing about earlier this week. just like that we are down to a flock of 26.
if you think about it, death is around us all the time in one form or another- the meat section at the store, squishing a bug, slapping a mosquito, seeing road kill, tv and movies, news, radio and simply the world around us. i realize that death is a part of life. but it is such a weird thing. to be here one moment and gone the next. something about it happening in our back yard, happening to a duck that we've raised since 2 days old makes it personal to me. i appreciated her life and now it's gone. it's different then looking at the chicken at the store, know what i mean? so tomorrow we will wake up to a flock of 26 and continue on. it's sad that mr hoyle is dead, but what do you do? tomorrow is a new day.
til next time,
farmer mom
No comments:
Post a Comment