Warning-This is a little gruesome.
I was walking home today from my bus stop thinking to myself that finally my day had gone how I wanted it to go. After seven straight bad ones this good one was much appreciated and desperately needed. I entered the front gate and found it strange that the dogs didn’t greet me as they normally do. That is until I remembered that Andres had mentioned in an email that four hens had been dropped off at our house this morning. I had been surprised when I heard this as I didn’t feel like the coop was completed, but didn’t give it much thought. That is until I got inside the gate and no dogs appeared.
I didn’t want to, but I felt like I had to go and see. I walked toward the coop and sure enough, there were all three dogs, on the wrong side of the fence, finishing there feast. Out of the four hens that were living this morning one was completely gone, I mean not even a foot or feather left. The second one was dead and half devoured. The third one was having his still beating heart licked by the boxer and the fourth one hovered in the corner, with a hole in his side.
I don’t do well with gore and I don’t do well with dogs who are so badly trained. I went bizerk. The dogs wouldn’t get out of the coop and I started to beat them with a stick (ok, not really beat them, but pretty close). It took me a good 10 minutes to get them out. I’m surprised I didn’t have a heart attack in that time. I’m sure the whole neighborhood could hear me screaming. As I screamed, cried and tried not to look at the chicken whose entire insides were sitting on top of his still alive body, I wanted more than anything else to completely disappear. I wanted to never have come to this place and I wanted to never have thought about building a chicken coop.
What failures we are. We started the dumb project over one month ago and all we’ve accomplished is to have caused extreme distress to four poor hens.
I could have given you a lot worse pictures, but I couldn’t bring myself to take them. Andres took a picture of them this morning when they were beautiful, alive and still had years of egg laying in front of them. I will post one soon.
Bad week for me…..worse for the once beautiful hens.
Moral of the story: buy your eggs at the supermarket, or learn how to train your dogs, or finish what you start before launching it.
Doubt I will have much more to write about the coop. Too bad it has to sit there and remind me of today.
