In Memoriam: Our Irrational Attachment to Animals

I’ll cut to the chase here. Our chicken Winnie died earlier today. We feel as bad as you can feel about… well… a chicken.

You may know Winnie from her cheeky Christmas letter or her sassy Facebook status updates. She was a silver-laced wyandotte, and one of the original Newell-Ching brood. She was about to turn two in mid-August.

Some context… Today was a record-setting hot day in Portland. It got up to 106! Absolutely brutal. I got home after work and started making dinner, then went to collect eggs from the coop… pretty much a daily routine. The chickens get all crazy when someone comes. Total pavlovian response. People=food. Maybe some awesome food like a weed or two.

Anyway, I saw 3 chickens getting all crazy, but Winnie wasn’t among them, so I figured she must be laying. So I opened the nest box, and only found 2 eggs, but no Winnie. It was about 8 pm, so there was a chance she might be perched one the roost where the girls sleep. No dice. So I opened the coop door, and there she was, lifeless on the coop floor.

Having an animal die on your watch just sucks. In fact, that’s probably the best word to describe it. I was at a loss to find a word to describe how I felt. Surprised. Crappy. Terrible that we didn’t do much to prevent it – they had plenty of water and shade, but we could have been more consistent about putting out cold water. We probably should have kept the run watered and put out a block of ice, or perhaps installed a fan. I guess in hindsight it’s easy to play woulda-shoulda-coulda. It just sucks.

Here's hoping there are lots of worms in chicken heaven...

But the reality is that she’s just a chicken. And in fact, there are some practical considerations we need to take here. We’re calling OSU extension tomorrow to see how we need to dispose of the body. There’s a chance it had nothing to do with the heat. Winnie hadn’t been laying in the past week or so, and she appeared to be losing some feathers. Megan noticed this last week but we didn’t think anything of it. I remember thinking that the chickens got through the extreme temperatures of the winter, so heat ain’t no thing. But she may have been sick. There has also been an influx of rat poop in the coop – they are small rats that can fit through chicken wire, and they love chicken feed. Another possibility: it might have been some kind of bird flu. And bird flu and pregnant Megan don’t mix.

Regardless, the heat probably didn’t help, and we probably could have helped mitigate that. And we feel lousy.

And yet, I say this knowing that our attachment to animals are completely irrational. Consider two unrelated facts:

• Today, about 28,000 kids under the age of 5 died mostly because they were too poor to survive.
• I have eaten chicken in the last week. Twice!

So human psychology must be pretty weird, because I am genuinely sad about losing Winnie. I never had pets growing up, so when I drove our five little two-day-old chicks home from the feed store two years ago, I remember feeling like some kind of light switch turned on. I took this footage hours after I got home:

I was now responsible for living beings. They were so helpless. Each week for the first five weeks we would meticulously adjust the heat lamp so they would be at the right temperature. Ninety-five degrees the first week, and five degrees cooler each week.  We were so proud when they laid their first eggs back in the spring of last year (one of the first is the banner of this blog). We had to give one of the chickens away because she was too aggressive, so we were down to four, and now we’re down to three.

I kind of feel like the Natalie Portman character in Garden State when the hamster dies a tragic accident in the hamster wheel. Yes, there’s something objectively comical about it, but it’s also kind of sad.

So to Winnie, adieu… Thanks for the memories, the eggs, the life lessons in responsibility, and for your sharp wit. I’ll miss you as much as a man can miss a chicken (don’t ask me to quantify that) and promise to take better care of the rest of the girls…

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