Unfortunately this week saw the demise of my beautiful blue-columbian boy, Sebastian. We aren't sure what happened to him, but we suspect either heart attack or stroke, because we found him just curled up in the front garden, looking as if he'd just gone to sleep. Normally, although this is obviously sad, I wouldn't make a huge fuss about it because, to quote my father, "If you've got livestock, you've got deadstock" and the passing of various chooks (whether naturally or whether en route to the Aga) is viewed as very much part of the whole cycle of life, or in more accurately in this case, death.
However, Sebastian was special. Weighing in at around 5kg he was one of my heavier birds and in style everything a brahma should be. He'd hurt his leg last autumn and over the winter I'd been babying him more than a little (the look on my vet's face when I brought a 5kg cockerel into his surgery isn't something I'm going to forget for a long while) and he was slowly getting better. Just lately he'd been showing more of an interest in his 'girls', his limp was almost gone, and we were living in hope we'd have some little Sebastians by the end of the season. All hopes now destroyed... his girls are now assimilated into Gordon's harem and Barry (White - because of his deep crow), my huge black brahma, and his ladies are now in the front garden being spoilt with first refusal on the kitchen scraps. I'm going to miss Sebastian, though - his gentleness, slightly lopsided stroll up whenever I was outside, and his lovely confederate grey cresting brightening up the space outside my kitchen. He is now residing under a new rosebush and lavender bed and I'll think of him everytime I look at it...
On a brighter note, chicks from the latest hatch started popping out today. Although however many times it happens it's quite exciting, this batch is especially so because these are from unlabelled eggs - Mini thought he'd 'help out' a few weeks ago and came back clutching a bowl with lots of eggs he'd collected from various pens but had forgotten to label them. [Note, when Mini 'helps' it's usually a prelude to either some act of lunacy or disaster so I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't worse]. The result of his labours today is a bit like 'chick pot luck'. Although some types are immediately obvious, other brahma colours are not hugely different when in chick form so I'm having some fun trying to guess what is what.
Aside from chick-tombola, planting roses on the chicken grave, and little bits of general daily domestica not even I can avoid doing, so far my 'down time' is absolute heaven. I've been able to sit around reading and quilting without the continual interruptions necessary to bail Mini out of whatever new mess he's got himself into (usually chicken, goose and/or poo related and therefore requiring immediate bathtime) or to satisfy Troll's seemingly continual requests for sustenance. Much as I love my child, it IS nice sometimes to have time to be 'me' again rather than 'Mummy'!
The news from France is also good, thank heavens. Troll has so far managed to heat up selections from the food-stack without either blowing up the cooker or killing himself and others, Mini has managed not to skim the upper layers of skin off his legs as he indulges in his favourite game of lying on top of his plastic truck and tobogganing down the road outside our house, and the house is, apparently, still standing. Perhaps I'll kick the pair of them over the Channel more frequently!
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