Tales From The Coop (sort of) Did you think I’d forgotten I was a chicken mommy? Not! A lot of other things have been happening, obviously, but The Girls are still very much in evidence. And even though I’m sticking to my vegan diet, which means no eggs, my husband is a dedicated egg consumer. He’s the original man who never met an egg he didn’t like. Especially when it is freshly laid and has a deep orange yolk. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s a big fan of live chickens. Oh, he put up with them. Longtime regulars here know all about THAT. He’s even stepped in and heroically rescued them. Remember Blackie and the crock pot? But, given a choice, he’d prefer to keep his contact with them limited to finding eggs rubbing shoulders with bacon on his breakfast plate, or adding flavor to the baked goods he loves. And, usually, it works out that way. I said, usually. Not long ago, I was in my kitchen minding my own business when my cell phone crowed. That meant Julia was calling. At that instant I was up to my elbows in warm homemade dog food, so I let it ring, thinking I’d call back as soon as I got my hands clean. It rang again, and then a third time. Not normal. Something was up. I rinsed my hands and grabbed my cell phone and hit speed dial. Something was up, all right. Blackie was seriously injured. I mean, seriously. Either she’d managed to get herself caught on a loose wire in the fence, or something had, in broad daylight, tried to drag her away. The entire skin of the right side and back of her neck had been ripped off and was hanging down on the left side, exposing neck bones and tendons. When I called, Julia was pulling out of her driveway on the way to the vet. I said I’d meet her there. We arrived seconds apart. Julia was just charging through the front door of the vet clinic when I careened into the parking area on two wheels. The receptionist took one look at Blackie and showed us to a room immediately. She said she would send the vet right in. Julia and I exchanged grim looks. The injury was horrible, and there was no telling how long she had been like that before Julia discovered her. It couldn’t have been more than about an hour, because Julia hadn’t let them out into the field at the usual time, but that was plenty of time for the huge gaping wound to become fatally contaminated. Blackie was sitting up and seemed fairly alert but she hadn’t made a sound and she hadn’t moved. The vet was not encouraging. Yes, the wound could be, and probably was, very contaminated. It was a very bad injury. The prospects for recovery were somewhere around thirty percent…if surgery was performed, which would have to be done to repair the damage. There was no guarantee that either Blackie would survive the surgery or that fatal infection would not set in. Euthanasia was recommended. Again, Julia and I exchanged looks. That wasn’t going to happen. “Operate,” I said, at the exact same instant Julia said, “Do the surgery.” The vet, whom neither of us had dealt with before, looked at us like we were absolutely crazy. Still, professionalism held. The vet began to give us facts in a soothing voice. The chicken was two years old already. The replacement cost of the chicken would be under ten dollars since she was a very common breed. The surgery would be expensive. The chicken would require constant care for at least a week after the surgery. The vet looked at us with an “I-know-you-will-be-reasonable” expression. We looked back at the vet with twin “get-the-danged-surgery-started” looks. The vet agreed with marked reluctance to perform the surgery, emphasizing that there were no guarantees. We were told that we would be telephoned with the results when the surgery was over. In other words, leave, please. We think they wanted us out of their building before we began to display more overt signs of insanity, but we went. Blackie came through the surgery just fine. She would, we were told, need to remain at the clinic for at least 24 hours, and then we would be shown how to change her bandages, which would have to be done four times a day for a week, and apply medication to the wound. She would have to be kept warm and totally quiet during the recovery period, which would be at least a couple of weeks. Right then we were too ecstatic to be worried about the recovery period. We were just glad she had survived! It was just about then that Julia found out she would need to go out of town for a couple of days… And the story will continue later today!
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 20:41:48 +0000
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