|
I Saved a Chicken from Super Flea Yesterday: Part 2 |
|
|
|
by Jessica Logsdon
|
|
I Saved a Chicken from Super Flea Yesterday: Part 2
|
After Red died, JaJa the medicine bird was never the same. Literally, after I buried Red in the chicken cemetery JaJa never got up out of the basket she and Red had cuddled up together in the night Red died. In fact, she continued to sit in that very same basket for exactly 27 days, she only got up a few times to stretch her legs, drink some water and to eat a little bit of grain. Once I realized she was intent on staying in the basket I decided to carry her inside to my house and set her next to the wood stove where she would be warmer. It was the dead of winter outside and silkie chickens lack the tiny hooks on the barbules of their feathers which would normally hold the feather's shape, this makes them look more like cats with beaks then like chickens with feathers. Unlike most chickens silkies have blue skin instead of red and they're composed of a darker blueish blackish like meat, which the Chinese believe has medicinal properties when cooked, hence silkies are considered medicine birds. Silkie chickens also have five toes instead of the regular three toed chicken and these extra two toes make them appear to have hands for feet. Oddly enough the addition of these two toes does not make them better at clinging or perching onto branches like most chickens enjoy doing on hot summer days up in the trees. Instead silkie chickens prefer the ground and this is where they stay most of the time. They have trouble even getting one foot off of the ground because of their fuzzy feathers and their snow shoe like feet. JaJa, the sikie medicine bird is the oldest type of chicken breed that we humans know about and therefore I knew that JaJa was trying to teach me something very important about life. She was in the house almost three weeks before I began to hear the most faint chirping noises coming out from underneath her. One morning when I was freshening up her water I reached into her basket and nudged her off of a clutch of eggs, not all of which were her own. I realized then she was sitting on eggs from all of the hens in the whole chicken herd. When JaJa got up I could hear them chirping from inside the eggs. They most of all layed eggs in this one basket and then JaJa decided to go broody, which means she felt the desire to give up her normal routine and just sit on these eggs, pouring all of her heat and energy into them until they hatched. To be broody for chickens is a common fever that spreads among the hens, but it usually occurs at the beginning of spring or during the heat of the summer, NOT during the dead of winter! And yet after witnessing the spontaneous death of Red, JaJa decided then and there was the time to produce more life and she did. From the dozen or so eggs small fluffy JaJa was able to stretch her little body on top of only one chic hatched. It has five toes, blue skin, bright white fluffy fur with small black spots and chipmunk like markings on its' back. What struck me the most about this beautiful little solo chic is that it has unusually long legs for a silkie, with just a hint of crimson red in it's fuzz. The spirit of Road Hard Red lives into the new year through this chic and like all years 2013 will be comprised of life and death, yen and yang, black and white, shadow and light. |
|
