Hens without tail feathers, rabbits dug their way to freedom

As has happened before, our silly hens have left their tail feathers and lovely crowns strewn about their yard. Who knows why they give up their down just as the short days threaten cold and darkness. Is it evidence of their tropical origins? Is it to prepare for even warmer plumage for the coming months? Or is it a protest against the darkening days that keep them pent up? Well, this weekend, they enjoyed bright days and followed the light where it was brightest, venturing far from the henhouse and tree coverage to luxuriate in LUZ.

We still have not been able to butcher Mr. Gentle. He is too tame to kill. Anyone want a sweet California White Rabbit? His siblings dug themselves free from their area, though they mostly elect to stay near the warren of their babyhood. Their father freely enters to visit them, but Uncle Scruffy, the submissive rabbit, has not. We don't know their sexes. Rabbit daughters may mate with their fathers but not their brothers. We watch and hope all our rabbits are males.

My son, Forrest, offered to kill us a rabbit for our dinner.

We are now down to five bunnies and will leave it to fate whether we let exclusively males continue to roam the larger yard, somewhat free, or to continue hosting births of kits. I say this because sexing rabbits is a challenge. Of the five remaining, we will allow the two adult males to live as well as one youngster, whether male or female. This leaves us with the task of killing two rabbits. Sadly, our original adult female fell to predation one month ago. Females are difficult to raise in the yard, due to their digging. It is harder to give them freedom and shortly after their young are born, the bunnies can hop anywhere, tiny as they are. So the mothers and young must be confined. Adult males, on the other hand can roam a large area, exercising plenty, foraging like their wild cousins, and drop their lovely pellets, helping our soil. Were we to have only male rabbits, we would have the option to cease with both killing and confining. Paul does not enjoy it. I refuse.

But, anyway, Forrest, brought in a rabbit last night, claiming he would do the dirty deed. Upon following his Dad's instructions, "Calm the rabbit, stroke it. Place its ears over its head. Then when it is fully relaxed, whack it over the head with...," Forrest only got to the part of placing its ears over its head, no further. Having bonded with the docile creature, he made a warren out of his bathroom downstairs. All his bravado and no willingness to kill. Now we have an indoor rabbit!

In raising "meat" rabbits, I have learned that it is hard to provide entirely humane conditions while raising livestock. Though I remain critical of the meat industry and still believe we must take local control of our food sources, I understand better the cruel measures taken in the mass production of protein. Hens are easy to raise in our back yard, but we do not kill our hens. Rabbits challenge.

We have not learned to kill; it is not natural for us. While he finds the butchering fascinating, Paul dreads the intimacy of the kill, and Forrest lost heart. I still have no hunger for meat. I only ate the parts of three rabbits out of respect for all the energy given to placing them before me on the plate. While a responsible act, eating these rabbits, it is not one I savor. The yielding nature, the appealing softness and the uneven and responsive ears of rabbits provoke sighs rather than hunger pangs.

I implore others to really consider what they consume. Nearly all that we take, not just meat, has a story, partly a cruel one. In this season of THANKS giving and so much need for resources by so many creatures, we would do well, to not just be thankful but to take far less as a daily discipline, a daily meditation.

Lean times now that the light lessens.
The hens,so connected to their sun, offer half as many eggs.

Because we think it's less violent to raise our own than to rely on industrial protein sources, even soy...


The Knowledge of It

Without innocence we took their lives…
after their birth to freedom and clannish love,
suckling their mother in the dark warren she had made
nestling together in piles of soft warmth.
After hiding in blackberry bramble,
and observing the boundary of the road but trespassing into our garden
after sharing lettuce, kale and onions
and loving apples and carrots,
after countless stretches and sun salutations,
after posing like contented dogs…
Upon entrapment in a wire bottomed hutch,
they saw clearly with their wide eyes
our narrow, predatorial focus;
their fine manure and gentleness had not bought them life.

After early mornings tending them,
cleaning their pen, offering greens, grain and water.
after fasting them to make the end kosher,
right after giving figs and clover,
then we took their lives. I stroked each one in my arms, cheek and forehead at once.
He folded their ears over their eyes, forced them to calmness,
their bodies slack and still, like yogis at rest.
He pinned them down under a crowbar and struggled hard so that it broke their necks.
All this tending ending in palpable violence.

Last of the Old Hens

Last of the Old Hens

Blue hobbles, favoring her left foot.
incontinent, she dribbles her infertile, pale
S e
e d
s

scattering them like the grains and flowers
that she eats; she is no longer nimble
enough to bear into the nest box.


Cadillac remains among her sisters
here to strut toward the human hand
she must find adequate---it can be
counted on to meet her simple demands.
Her life is good, she knows so she crows
into my chest the most fetching gurgle.
I embrace this pulse, this warmth.
Her scaly talon wraps round mine.
Her nails describe her work:
An armless search, scratching, moving into
the shade of a Birch when the sky so decrees.
She is all skirt and feminine gifts. I love her
for her friendly ways. Her sisters were not
so forward. Even among fowl such a one
displays fine and few.


Crooked Sister shies and skitters
without her crooked crew. Poor old bird.
Once a member of a trio of maimed chicks,
she and her flock now and then found themselves
in the mouth of a Labrador, then released
only to be pursued and caught by their tails,
made twisted and broken. Still she lays!

Rabbit update...it has been awhile

Our rabbits have lived up to their reputation of fecundity, and despite being separated from the two males for the last six weeks, the mother rabbit, Ol Yeller, has given birth to two new litters, the first consisting of 3 young and the most recent, of 6. Here is proof then that a rabbit can carry two separate litters or pregnancies in her womb at once!

Her very first spring litter had 6 young. We gave 2 away to a Bellingham urban farm so our young rabbits now number 13 and our adults 3. We had separated the remaining four from the first litter born to our "urban farm" and fed them oregano, dandelion, clover, sage, grass, strawberries, greens as well as their locally produced alfalfa grain mixture. It seems that the time to butcher them draws near. Our lack of experience causes us to hesitate...I do believe I will be able to eat them, however, even though I have not eaten meat in over 8 years.

Fortunately, we never had to butcher our hens. We use no lights to cause them to lay all winter and so they lay all their long lives, though less frequently than their young flockmates.

We feel good about the living conditions for Ol Yeller and her 8 young ones. She still allows the older ones to nurse and all get along well. Rabbits are so affectionate with one another! If we ever brave up and do the nasty deed, we will have to do so in groups, so as to not pain them with the loss of their siblings.

Wild ones, attempting to survive, dealing with steel and speed and petro, you and I observing.

You witnessed it, the black bear who shepherded her cubs across the highway,
the cars that paused, you and I behind our bikes, wondering and wary, fishing
for our cameras, too stunned to get a shot. I leaned into you, afraid for us, far
more afraid for them. We were unwilling to follow their route over the median wall across the other side of the highway beneath the pass that was our goal. What was theirs? Water, you suggested and you spoke for them. “They/we cross this way often.” What did you observe that they needed on each side of concrete and risk? This road seemed to you part of their routine, this road of death that connected them to sustenance.

Which weed are you?
Ivy that extinguishes others?
Knot weed that consumes greedy as a giant?
Deceitful blackberry that uses lovely birds to spread its fruit and fury?
Or Scotch broom that replaces meadows like a parking lot?

A visit with my daughter

We walked distances I would pedal
and mixed the flowers of herbs into a fresh curry
for soup and a sweet sour dough, round and ilumined.
We spent our money at small places along alleys
where young folks parked their bicycles. We
walked a labyrinth and stooped into berries,
evidence on our knees.
We traced lakes with our dogged strokes,
I not mentally able to keep up but still getting there. Where?
We observed Cervantes as he mocked virtues
and identified each and every element of his tale twice
like us, twice a person, grappling with the 6th extinction
as I understand it…reading about the “lost and left behind”
during this age of abundance and beautiful tragedy,
mindful of the rainbow in the oil slick.

Independence from Harmful Traditions this July 4

True Patriotism
With the tragic loss of life that our Gulf of Mexico undergoes this year, I invite true American Patriots to refrain from celebrating via the use of pyrotechnics, especially along our streams, rivers and bays. We know fireworks torture our domestic animals as well as wildlife and marine species. In respect for the creatures of the Gulf, let us use the symbolism of the Fourth of July to mark our independence from selfish traditions that disregard life. Let us show some restraint and honor the beauty of sea turtles, dolphins, pelicans, verdant estuaries and clean beaches. Or at least they once were beautiful but now suffer the horrific hell that wages a war of fertilizer runoff, oil, dispersants and fire. After such an Independence Day, we could then rethink all our behaviors concerning water and our lovely, but endangered Puget Sound. We could proclaim water our life blood and preserve it by: driving less; creating gray water solutions in our homes or constructing rain gardens; planting native species alongside our shores; drinking from reusable containers; holding car washes on permeable surfaces; and helping the poor to obtain water filters, etc… Please join me on this Fourth of July, 2010, in my efforts to free myself from the tyranny of practices that harm other lives.

Alleys

Alleys

My dogs and I choose the alleys over the streets,
their porous surfaces underfoot; alleys massage
the dew claw and the dew and all substances that enter
EARTH. The backways offer scents for my companions
to ponder and consecrate while I gather dandelions
and clover for the rabbits and hens. Sometimes, I
let one free, as the alleys accept wild ways. Tall
grasses, ivy fighting with knotweed, wheel barrow
leaning, a shovel standing erect, compost piles.
Life seems real here: less for show and more about
what is required. Some folks garden out back. Mason
bees pollinate overgrown borage. I spy a green plum
and think I will return here in August. Without eating,
I swallow hard over chard of every color, ripe berries.
A crow saunters ahead of us and takes a short flight
onto a post, waiting for us to move on. Again and again,
the dogs follow scent trails that I cannot detect, the
hidden paths of others who ambled here. Perhaps for a
rodent that has passed this way, the smaller dog yips and
spiral dances. We pause at a school yard but there are
no children today, just acrobat swallows diving for bugs.

Beginnings

Our thirteen year old daughter insisted we raise our own chickens some eight years ago. Since then, they have colored our lives with their cackles, dust baths, scratching and eggs. My husband and I live in a city on a busy road with a view of the lovely Narrows, but enjoy a large lot and we have given half of it to the 13 hens, who are agile athletes, insect hunters and foragers of grass and seed. We are relieved to get protein from our own land and to be able to feed the chickens a locally manufactured grain. We also love selling eggs and giving countless away. I remember lamenting the waste that was my yard. Now it is transformed into productive pasture!

It is illegal for us to have a rooster. Only recently have we dealt with broody hens. After successfully ridding our first victim some months ago of this condition---we picked her up and moved her all the live long day--- two others currently want to hatch their own young. They warm stones hopefully, rarely eating or drinking. I must carry them to the water hole and each afternoon, shut the hen house, in order to prevent them from nesting day and night. They become weaker and weaker, never able to hatch either stones or their own infertile eggs. They are unfulfilled! We wonder why roosters are outlawed but noisy and toxic cars continue to drive next to the Puget Sound, contributing to its rising mercury levels. We want just one rooster. Our hens do even more so.

More recently, after speculating aloud with a visitor, that rabbit husbandry makes sense, for city dwellers, this individual showed up in the middle of the night, leaving 3 California White Rabbits, rather irresponsibly. My husband and son got busy building them a hutch and fencing them in next to our hen house. We were told they were 2 females and 1 male but it turned out that only 1 was a female. We have thanked the stars many times for this confusion, as she has lived up to her reputation and produced two litters since reaching maturity last March. On May 13, our daughter's 21st birthday, I set the 3 rabbits "free"...which meant I opened their area gate, encouraging them to forage the larger yard. Rabbits eat far less discriminately than do hens. In no time, they had clipped our oregano and sage neatly, eventually leaving them leafless. At this point, we had not realized that 6 babies lived in the burrow their mother had built. Only in retrospect, did it occur to us that the reason one rabbit had turned yellow, was that she was preparing to mother. Old Leller began digging a warren for her young much before she reached sexual maturity. She was filthy due to her long hours of work in the dirt.

When her babies popped out of the warren on spindly legs that carried them unevenly, what wonder we all felt, the adult rabbits too! The father and mother cuddling proudly, the babies atop them. Plenty of nose kisses and sharing of carrots. Uncle Scruffy, who had fought to father but lost and carried wounds proving his earnest desire, a sentinel. He too, looked after the young ones though he stayed away from father Big White. We were astonished at how communal rabbits are, how loving to one another. But more experienced now, we realized that Old Lellow was carrying a second litter. We sadly admitted that rabbit family love was unsustainable in our yard by the Sound.

My husband, Paul, built two rabbit traps which when turned over became hutches. He placed delectables inside and over a two week period managed to catch the 6 baby rabbits. They had known a life of delincuency. They had slipped through all fence openings, into the garden, around the front and onto the road side. And wherever they slipped, they ate! Mainly our bean plants and radishes! Paul made a trap door, roped it, looped the rope onto our deck and watched for baby bunnies to head inside. When they did, from the deck,he pulled the door shut, ran outside and placed the bunnies inside a larger hutch.

The result of all his clever plotting is that the two males share the larger yard; Old Leller and her second litter dwell in the original bunny yard, now bolted shut and surrounded in tightly woven chicken wire; and the 6 first generation babies live in a hutch. The lover parents kiss through the fence. Big White still bites Uncle Scruffy whenever they are near one another. The six babies pile together as they must have in their warren some weeks ago.

The conversation that inspired the residency of the original rabbits involved raising rabbits as a protein source...My thought then was that it could be humane and responsible to raise rabbits. I do feel that the males have a lot of space but they experience loneliness. The mother is free from pregnancy for a time and can devote herself to the new brood. I can live with the way we are treating these rabbits. However, my heart is sad for the six in the hutch. They had frolicked and taken such liberties. What a contrast caged life must be for them. I was astonished at the affection of rabbit family life, but the month long reproductive cycle forces us to be very calculating.

Well, two babies from Litter #1 will be moving to a Bellingham urban farm next week. The other four will be butchered in October. The nursing babies will be butchered in November and will have only known a sweet life with their mother until just prior to their deaths. Then we might breed Uncle Scruffy, abuse victim, with Old Leller. This third litter too, will have only known life with their mother.

I have been a vegetarian for eight years. I am not particularly hungry for rabbit meat, but I believe I will at least try some, in appreciation, feeling that I truly earned the right to eat.