Post-Trauma Lessons

Beloved:

         Minus quite a few tail feathers, my fifteen remaining hens seem to be on the mend.  They are laying eggs again.  During the day they venture a little further into the yard to hunt bugs.  Sunday a week ago I forgot to close their coop at sunset, and coyotes attacked them in the middle of the night.  My kids heard the commotion and ran outside, but not before they’d killed five hens and injured another.  The kids spent hours rounding up the scattered flock and carrying them back to the coop.  I’d like to think coyotes have to eat too, but they left my girls where they lay, all broken and torn.  So many feathers.

             At least that’s what my kids said.  They didn’t want me to see it, so after they caught all the chickens they got out trash bags and rakes and cleaned up everything before the sun rose.  At daylight they went out and found the injured bird, but she died as we tended her wounds. 
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​            Truth be told, I accidently left the coop open all night one other time but to no bad end.  I expect the coyotes check nightly now, hoping I’ll be that careless again.  So I’m sad and a little sick about it.  We sometimes butcher hens when they’ve quit laying, and I prided myself on saying that my girls have one bad moment their whole lives.  Not true for these survivors.  They’ve had a bad week, and I doubt the golden retrievers will seem so trusty from now on either. 

              In the smallest of ways I’m learning new things about violence.  I could predict coyotes want to kill my chickens.  I would not have predicted a slaughter nor the post-trauma to my flock.  I hardly got any eggs last week, teaching me that the food chain itself is interrupted by violence.  If fear has such measurable effect so low in the food chain, what havoc must it be wreaking at the human level?  What scientific, artistic, and social discoveries go unmade because the people we need to make those discoveries are instead overwhelmed by the fear and trauma of past violence?  To what degree has civilization been interrupted by residual harm to the survivors of child abuse, of violent crime, of racism, sexism or war?  Thinking about that makes me even more sad and heartsick. 
            One other thing which I already knew but was glad to learn again is that I have pretty awesome kids.  I pray this day has a bright side for you as well.  Do take care. 

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