Backyard
Lessons in Love
As
those of you who have been reading this
newsletter for a while may know, I keep backyard
hens. Mostly rescues from factory farms or
adopted from people who can’t keep them any
longer for one reason or another. Since they
tend to be elderly and I live in an
urban-wildland interface, death (by predator or
illness) is a frequent visitor to the
backyard.
That
was certainly the case in late 2023, when my
flock dwindled to one — a black-feathered hen
called Dahlia. Skinny and belligerent, Dahlia
never got along with other hens (which is why
she was handed to us). So when various maladies
carried away her coop-mates, we decided she
could have the place to herself until it was her
time as well. Dahlia seemed to like that quite
fine — until spring came along. Then she got
broody. She sat in the nesting box for three or
four days, barely eating, hoping her
unfertilized eggs would hatch. (You need a
rooster to make baby chicks, and we don’t keep
one because of city noise ordinances.) She got
over it eventually, but when spring 2025 rolled
around, she was back at it, starving herself and
pining for babies.
We
are softies, I guess. So we sourced some
fertilized eggs from Whole Foods (yup, they sell
those) and from a friend who lives on a farm and
placed them under her. Two weeks on, in
mid-June, a yellow fluffball peeked out! My
daughter named the chick Sunny. The rest of the
eggs didn’t hatch, so a few days later, we
bought three week-old chicks of assorted breeds
from a farm store and stuck them under Dahlia at
night. She spread her wings over the little ones
and accepted them all. Watching the once-crabby
hen cooing softly at her adopted babies as they
scampered around the backyard was such a
joy.
Then,
one August evening, after a careless mistake,
death came stalking again through the open coop
door. Three chicks survived, but the raccoons
got the littlest one. And Dahlia. All we found
of her were piles of black feathers in the coop,
by the fence, all around the yard. She had died
defending her babies.
I’ve
been grieving in waves since, but also marveling
at a Mama Dahlia, whose love, once ignited, was
so expansive, so fierce. She didn’t give a damn
about where those chicks came from or what breed
they were. Amid all the violence and hate-filled
discourse that’s swirling around us at the
moment, I’m holding onto the idea that we too
have the capacity to love those who might not be
quite like us.
*
We
have a new associate editor! Serena Renner, who
joined the Journal this month, has more
than 15 years of international journalism
experience and comes to us from the erstwhile
Hakai Magazine. We are excited to have
her on board and look forward to exploring new
avenues of growth for the Journal
together.
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