This is a section of my farm story

Taken out of chapter 1996

Big Red and Henny-Penny

My sister gave me a big red rooster a couple of years before this. He came to live on the farm with his little Henny-Penny wife. They were quite the couple. He was so large and she was a tiny bandy hen. They managed to out step the bobcat and other predators during that time.

Big Red loving up a goose Henny-Penny with new duck hatchlings

One day I went out to the coop and found him lying dead in the straw. He hadn’t been mauled so I figured he had died of old age. I picked him up and set him up on a box while I finished feeding the rest of the girls.

When I went to pick him up I found Henny-Penny had hopped up on the box and was trying to talk to him. It was so sad. I watched as she poked at him with her beak and tried to get him to get up. ‘Come on, come on’, she was saying. She flustered about trying to get his attention. She kept saying ‘Let’s go, let’s go’. She couldn’t grasp he was gone and clucked and clucked at him.

I finally picked her up and talked to her. I told her she would have to pull it together and get on with being a widow. She had been such a good mother, raising many batches of chicks and a few ducks to boot. I knew she was grieving very much. I took care of his funeral and watched Henny-Penny closely the next few weeks. She never could get back to chicken life and she passed away soon after that. I was sure she grieved herself to death.

That was the saddest event I ever witnessed. Except for the times she was tending to little chicks they were never more than a couple of feet apart. He looked after her finding all sorts of goodies for her to eat, and she was devoted to him. It was the closest communication between two chickens I ever seen. Get another hanky; I can feel the tears brimming over again. Man, I hate tear-jerking events, but they happened along with the laughter. This was not a humorous day.

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