I’ve put off this post for one week now – partly because I just didn’t want to write it and partly because I couldn’t.  Every time I got started, I ended up too sad to finish.  We lost our little Oreo, and it’s been a total heartbreak.  I would have never thought I’d be so upset over the loss of a chicken, but I am.

John and I were having breakfast last Saturday.  We lost track of time, and he had to race out to pick up Cooper.  He forgot to put her back in her coop, and I forgot about her too.  It’s terrible.  Before breakfast, I had been laughing and taking pictures of her perched on the windowsill, then I was even outside on the patio petting her.  But I cleaned up the dishes and went about my morning without thinking twice.  Not much more than an hour could have passed before I noticed that the door to her coop was still open, but she was already gone.

So began the first stage of grief – denial.  We saw two hawks circling overhead; John knew, but I denied.  I didn’t see any signs of a struggle when searching the yard.  She had sneaked in the house under Luke’s hind legs the day before, and when John scooped her up off the tile, she lost at least five feathers.  Why wouldn’t there be feathers anywhere?  It didn’t add up in my mind – no feathers, no squawking, she’s got to be okay.

It was possible she had wandered off, so we walked the neighborhood yelling and clucking, “Oreo, chick-a-chick-a-chick-a.”  We let Luke run wild in the hopes she would spring out from under a bush at the sight of him, but she didn’t.  The final hope was that she’d find her way back to her coop before nightfall.

When she wasn’t there the next morning, I knew too…except that denial was still lingering.  On Sunday afternoon, John and I were on different ends of the house but both ended up on the back patio shouting Oreo again.  We were sure we had heard her, but we hadn’t.  Denial was replaced with sadness again.

We didn’t even have Oreo two months, but it’s hard to look at her empty coop through the window.  I was sweeping the floor and found a feather; I couldn’t bear to sweep it out the door with the dirt, so I saved it.  Oreo had become part of our family.  She was a regular on Skype with Aunt Tracey, whose little girl’s lead-in had become putting her own butt up to the camera and shouting, “chicken butt!”  Adorable and funny…just like our Oreo.  Here are a few things I never got the chance to post:

A blooper…

And the photos from her last morning with us…

We’ll miss you, Oreo.

When there’s no fresh produce in Florida, there’s always fresh seafood.  Tonight’s main course was caught and cooked by Cooper – flounder.

My father forced me to eat a mussel as a child, and I didn’t eat seafood for a good 10-15 years after.  It was slimy and chewy and something I still won’t eat to this day.  But I’ve been living in Florida for the last 16 years, so seafood has naturally become part of my diet.  It doesn’t happen every time, but it is such a treat when John comes home with fresh fish.  Tonight it was flounder, and it was Cooper’s catch, but John has brought home mahi-mahi, snapper, grouper, and snook before.  It’s the equivalent of walking outside to pull a grapefruit from the tree.  The finest restaurant in town can’t serve me anything fresher.  “Fishy” flavors take time to evolve; our flounder didn’t have a hint of it.  The fish was light, flaky and delicious.

Cooper was successful today; he won our dinner.  Luckily, the two hawks that swooped down into our yard yesterday didn’t win theirs.  I was out at a baby shower, but John was inside when he heard the squawking.  Oreo had run into the back corner of her coop, and there were two hawks outside her door.  They were too big to get in, and John scared them away when he opened the door.  Although one was only scared up; he was still lurking on the utility wires.  John got this photo with his camera phone and then got the pellet gun.

The hawk must have felt the scope on him because he flew away before John could fire a shot.  And FYI: the pellet gun wouldn’t have killed the hawk.  The hope was just to scare him enough so he won’t come back.  The hawks scared us enough that we’re back on vigilant Oreo-watch again.  We got a little too comfortable with her getting bigger and always standing in Luke’s shadow.  She’s still at quite the yummy age, and the hawks aren’t her first visitors.  A stray cat was trying to get into her cage a couple weeks ago.  But sleep tight, Oreo’s safely in her coop for the night.

I was on the phone with a friend earlier and ventured a guess at Oreo’s weight and said 10 ounces.  She has about tripled in size, but her size is deceiving because most of her growth is in feathers.  She was just a four-ounce fuzz ball when we first brought her home.

That was her first weigh-in, and it was much easier.  She wasn’t flying then.  This time around she immediately flew off the scale taking the bowl with her.  John settled her down, and take two went much better.

That’s the difference a month makes in chick-land.  Chick no more; we can add the -en now.  She’s looking like a full-blown chicken.  Her little chicken face has started to develop, and she has actual feathers.  And her weight?  Ten ounces…a mama knows.