abattoir blues

They're both gone now.

Sophie (the redhead) had some gynecological issues a while ago and ended up infested with maggots. I valiantly tried to remove them but they had well and truly set up shop deep inside her and had no intention of relinquishing their new home (and food source).

I make it all sound very blasé, when in fact it was anything but. I was distraught at the thought of all of her organs rotting inside of her and being consumed alive and all I could do was stroke her and tell her she was a good girl. In the end there was nothing for me to do but make like Marie Antoinette and chop her head off. Luckily no one else was there to see how badly off she was, because the smell of rotting flesh and the hundreds of writhing maggots spilling out from her was just too much. About a quarter of her body was just gone, eaten away.

Francesca (the fetchingly raven feathered one) came to a much more mysterious demise. One day she was wandering around her little yard, pecking and scratching, the next morning she was gone. Which begs the question; gone where? She was locked up and couldn't escape on her own accord; there was no blood or signs of a struggle so that rules out a fox. The only plausible theories I could come up with were that she was either taken by a hawk and made a meal of, or some cruel, vindictive person went to rather significant efforts to steal her. A little pointless because at 5 years old she wouldn't have been much good for a feed, plus she had recently stopped laying eggs. So if someone did pinch her, all they've ended up with is a menopausal, crotchety old chook who'll scratch up their yard. That said, I would like to know what happened to her.

It was very difficult to explain to my mother, on the other side of the world, that I had, inadvertently, killed another one of her chickens.