A late winter snow was called the last snow of the season by an optimistic reporter. While winter is not my favorite season, it does have its own remarkable beauty. In the cold morning air I took the dogs for a walk along the edge of a vast, snow-covered field. Its corn stubble stalks standing like miniature sentries. The creek was to my left and ahead was a hillside covered with bare trees and evergreens. It was completely still, eerily quiet, not a sound, not even from the stream as it flowed on silently. The only noise came from my clomping feet as I trudged through the snow. And I wanted to take in the moment, to capture it, because in five months, in the heat and humidity and teaming sounds of August, it will be difficult to believe that such a moment ever existed.

The power of motherhood was dramatically shown here at the Hermitage recently when two Muscovy mothers hatched their broods and then lost them.

One stands sentinel near the shed where she had sat on her eggs for week after week, leaving only once a day, briefly, for food and water, until they hatched, seven of them. And I took four of them away from her. She hissed and flew at me to keep me away. It was all she could do and it wasn’t enough. I took the four precious yellow, fuzz-covered ducklings and put them under a heat lamp. They’re still living, bigger each day. And they will stay indoors until their feathers come out and they’ll be able to survive on their own. I didn’t take all of them because that would have hurt her too much, such loss after so much preparation, so much loving care for her babies, keeping them warm with down plucked from her breast and with the gentle heat from her body activating the precious chemicals in each egg to create life. I knew she would lose them but, as I said, I couldn’t take all of her babies. And lose them, she did.

Something came in the dark, as I knew it would, probably a fox, maybe an opossum or a badger. It would have come quietly, slowly, and I’m sure the mother duck was aware of it. She was always on the alert, always making sure her babies were safe. But once the predator actually attacked, there was no way she could defend her children or even herself. She had no claws, no teeth, all she could do was scream with her babies as they were taken away to be eaten alive, a grotesque end for such pure, innocent beauty.

Now she watches daily, as I said, looking for her babies that will never return. Finally, she will return to the flock by the pond and, hopefully, next year will try again. Thankfully we have four of her babies though she will never know that.



It was the night of Hurricane Sandy. The wind was howling and the rain was horizontal. And there they were, right by the chicken yard, I couldn’t believe it, a mother duck and her newly-hatched babies, all looking lost and bewildered, even the mother. Why, on this night of all nights, did her babies have to hatch out? But there they were, six this time. I quickly swept four of them into a bucket and brought them indoors, placing them under the same heat lamp with the others.

The next morning, the two baby ducklings were still living, sitting under their mother who covered them with her body from the still-falling rain. But it was cold and damp, not good conditions for freshly-hatched babies. The following morning I returned to the Hermitage and saw the mother standing sentinel beside a lifeless form, her one remaining baby was dead, the life sucked out of its fragile body by cold and damp. The mother just stood there as though waiting long enough would bring it back to life. It broke my heart as I picked up the lifeless form and took it away. The mother just watched me leave with her baby. There was nothing else she could do. She stood there for the longest time. She also doesn’t know that four of her babies live. How can I tell her? How can I let her know that all those weeks were not in vain? That life from her body remains? No, she will never know. But I know. And her children live.

The Death of Innocents

The last time I saw him alive, he was angrily pecking at my feet as he and his buddy do every day. For some reason my very presence irritated them both to the point where they followed me around the barnyard, making those specialized turkey noises that say "You really tick me off." Perhaps it came from those days when he was young and still living inside the enclosed bird yard when I'd pick him up, which he hated, but then I'd reach between his belly feathers to scratch his skin, which he loved. His eyes glazed over and his beak parted slightly as though he were hypnotized into a state of peaceful oblivion. Which ended as soon as I put him back on the ground when he became furious with me, as though I had humiliated him in front of the other birds and, as I said, perhaps he never forgave me.

The next time I saw him he was lying dead in a field two miles away where the drunken teenage punks who battered him to death had thrown his mutilated body along with the murder weapon, a metal crutch broken in half by the force of the assault. We knew the crutch had been used to kill him, plus the other dead, the turkey hen and several ducks, thrown into the field by the side of the road because part of the crutch had been left behind at the scene of the crime.

It's amazing we even found their bodies, tossed away as they were off a back road. My brother Christian was by chance driving along the road when he saw a Muscovy duck with its distinctive red head and white body by the road where no domestic duck would be. Stopping, Christian then saw the bodies of the turkeys and ducks and realized they were ours. Words do fail us at times. How to describe the shock and horror Christian felt at that moment, to see such senseless violence perpetrated on such innocent children? One feels violated, as though evil tore into a private place once thought safe. But safety is relative and we've rarely felt safe knowing all it takes is one carload of alcohol and/or drug-fueled teenagers to shatter the evening with their taunts and screams and brutality. Just when one generation matures and grows out of senseless, mindless violence, another comes along to take its place. Education is ceaseless but it does wear; it does wear.

And now I hold the lifeless body of a sweet child I deeply loved in my arms, cold, stiff, bloody. How strange the transformation from life to death, from movement to stillness, from alert, clear, perceiving eyes to cloudy eyes that see nothing. This is a transformation that never ceases to amaze and horrify me, to taunt me with my own helplessness. For every time I see death, I know just how cruel nature can be, but never, ever with the thoughtless, blind, willful cruelty of so-called humanity.

Winter photos at the Hermitage

    Looking across the upper field

                                                                         to the buildings.

    Looking up to the spinning

                                                        and weaving studio

    Our turkeys, Spanish Red and

                                                                   Royal Palms

  Blackie, one of the barn cats

   One of our many, many Muscovy ducks

   Charlotte, one of three barn cats

                             and Blackie's daughter. 

Summer and Fall, 2011 Loss

1.

Fall, 2011

It's been a long, tiring and trying six months here at the Hermitage. Spring started with so much rain we were unable to plant our flax until June, months after it should have been planted. Then there was no rain at all for June and July. This means nothing for those in the Southwest who have gone without rain for two or more years, but for us here in Pennsylvania, it was devastating. Corn, flax, soy beans, hay, all field crops were severely stunted. Even though we irrigated the flax, that could not make up for the lack and loss of rain. Flax was stunted, corn leaves turned pale green and began curling, never a good sign, then the lower leaves began yellowing, then browning, all before the corn even tasseled. We were looking, as so many farmers across the country, at complete loss of our crops. Psychologically the effect was equally devastating as we became aware of the suffering of the earth and its plants to the point where we could think about little else. Towards the end of July we began calling out for rain, seeking to help call it into being, to reinforce whatever slim chance there might be for rain. One day I was up in the barn just under the roof working on a project. The sky grew cloudy and darkened. Suddenly, one by one, I heard drops of rain on the tin roof just inches above my head. The drops came faster and faster, growing louder and louder until the sky opened up and torrents of water fell onto the parched earth. The sound was loud, thundering in my ears. It was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. I sat there hearing it pound the roof and rejoiced in the very existence of the rain, of its healing the earth and nurturing the crops. We were saved and we were so happy.

Yet this was no a summer of moderation. Rather it was a season of excess of all things, including rain. Once it finally started, it didn't stop. The flax and other crops remained stunted though they did live. What was not stunted was the crop of weeds that grew like Topsy during the ensuing weeks and months. They overwhelmed our flax, crowding and choking out the slender flax stalks despite spraying. This was also the summer we were videotaping the growing of the flax field as part of our series on flax processing. Each week we filmed the growth and changes of the flax field and it was highly embarrassing to also be documenting the weeds and how they overwhelmed our poor crop. So much for being flax experts, we thought, but we were far from unique in suffering the depredations of climate this season.

2.

September 6, 2011

Despite the flooding, we were both on the road today. Christian had to go into Pottsville, the county seat, on business and took my dog, the little black mutt, with him. I went the other direction, up to Sunbury along the Susquehanna River, to pick up Dido, the Dalmatian. We took her up yesterday to be spayed. She recovered well from the operation but was kept overnight for observation. We were worried she might be pregnant but fortunately she wasn’t. It was tricky getting up to Sunbury; I had to backtrack a number of times when various roads were flooded. Finally I got within a hundred yards of the animal hospital only to find out it was flooded from both sides and could not be reached by road. Surprisingly I found the surgeon who did the operation standing behind me looking at the water and said the only way to reach the hospital was by going over the train trestle down behind the hospital. He was it was still passable as the water was still a foot below the rails. So I crossed on the trestle and saw houses under three feet of water. I finally made it to the front door of the hospital only to find it was locked! Fortunately the surgeon called on his cell phone and someone opened the door for me. They had no electricity and were basically closed down but let me take Dido so we went back across the trestle, realizing it was only a matter of time before it, too, was covered with the roiling water. Huge logs were being battered against the trestle; it was quite a sight. Once we got to the van, I had to lift Dido in because she was unable to jump on her own. She was also wearing one of those plastic cones so she could not bite her incision.

Coming back was another experience as roads were closing all around us. The major state road, that I felt sure must be open, was under water and the traffic was just backing up. I turned around and eventually pulled into a state police barracks to ask what roads were still open. “Not many,” I was told. There was one that might still be open to the south, I was told, but the officer wasn’t sure. I took it because it was my only chance of getting home. Water was rushing across the road in many places up to six inches and more deep. Fortunately I was in the van we took to Maine as it sits high off the ground. An ordinary car would never have made it. I ended up taking chances I wouldn’t have taken if there were better options, but there weren’t. If one road was closed, there was often only one other way to get home, or at least get closer to home in case I finally had to stop and walk. So it was a harrowing experience but we finally made it back. I put Dido on Christian’s bed and covered her up, which was exactly where she wanted to be. Christian came home an hour or so later with basically a similar story to tell. We were both very lucky to get back as many people did not make it back to their homes tonight and are stranded out there.

3.

Early in the summer I went to the dock to feed the catfish and I saw a horrible sight: one of our young catfish was in the mouth of what I thought was an eel. Now, I’ve never seen a live eel. Though once numerous in local streams, they were basically fished to extinction. Still, I’d heard rumors that they still existed and were able to come upstream to feed. I was angry yet helpless. I had no way to kill the creature. After some thought, I decided to put a corn knife on the end of a long pole. A corn knife was used to cut stalks of corn before mechanical harvesters were invented and were used in our valley up to World War II. It looks like a machete. I kept my killing tool down near the pond but didn’t see the eel again for months. By that time I had learned I was looking at a water snake, a copperhead by the shape of its head, which looked rather like a dragon sticking out of the water. It came up at a right angle. I didn’t know copperheads could swim, let alone take down a catfish, but I saw it along the edge of the water, eating a young catfish. This infuriated me. I ran up to the First House and asked Christian if he’d like to see me kill a snake. He came down while I grabbed the corn knife and went for the snake. Unfortunately it dropped the catfish and swam away undamaged beyond the length of the handle. I was frustrated to have waited so many months for this moment only to have the snake swim away. But it decided to come back, right for me. I guess it was angry at having to leave its prey. I waited until it was within reach of the knife. I quickly brought the knife down, slicing the snake in two and continued hacking away at it. The water turned red. The job was done. The remains of the snake later washed up on the edge of the water. I haven’t seen any others but I do worry that others may also be living in the pond. We’ll have to wait until spring when the water warms up to see what happens. This is the second snake I’ve had to kill this year due to feeding on our birds and fish. I hate to do it because I like snakes. I’ve just been surprised that what they consider food are creatures we value. But that’s the way of nature. I was reading a newspaper column by a rabbi who was trying to convince a young man of the existence of God by pointing to the beauty of nature. I realized that the rabbi was actually far removed from the reality of nature, of its infinite cruelty, of the untold suffering its creatures inflict upon other creatures; humanity being only one of many responsible for so much pain. It is only because I believe in the perfectibility of nature that allows me to continue being so close to it, though the price in terms of lost creatures is high.

This brings me to Mr. Wernert, a Muscovy duck that was dropped off at the Hermitage by someone. Judging by Mr. Wernert’s friendliness, he had been raised and handled from a young age because he loved people. Everyday he would stop whatever he was doing and waddle over to see me, quacking like crazy, conversing in an unknown tongue. Still, I was so taken by him that I would squat to his level and squawk back. I’m never sure what we were talking about but we were obviously engaged. I’ve never had such interaction with a bird before but we developed a relationship.

Mr. Wernert did not like being touched. He always stayed just beyond arm’s length but at that distance he felt comfortable. Whenever he was surprised the feathers on his head stood up, one of the few ways he had of expressing emotion other than quacking. It gave him the look of one of those butch haircuts from the 1950s when teenage boys made the front of their hair stand up with Brylcream. As with all birds, Mr. Wernert could look at you directly with both eyes but he was also able to turn his head and look at you with one eye or the other. I often wondered what he was seeing in that brain of his; perhaps a kind of stereoscopic image combining both eyes into a vista quite different from our own.

We called him Mr. Wernert because he had a white bouffant pompadour reminiscent of a former employer by that name.

The only problem with Mr. Wernert is that he loved to sit on the road; the warm asphalt soaking into his belly. You know where this is going. I knew it too and every day I warned him to stay off the road. Many times I shooed him away but I could not always be there to guard him and one day I found him dead on the road, his eyes still open with that quizzical look all creatures have at the moment of their passing. I screamed and screamed as I took him in my arms and walked up to the First House to show him to Christian who was also devastated by our loss. We only had him for one summer and he brought such joy into our lives. Now he was gone. At such times I think of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death. She has taken so many of our babies this summer. It has been a season of loss but the only way to avoid such loss is not to engage with creatures in the first place and that we refuse to do. We’re talking family here and even though hearts will be broken, our creatures bring us such joy and connection to nature that we understand loss comes with gain. We suffer the loss of our creatures rather than suffer the cost of being alone and disconnected from the planet.

4.

We have never had luck in geese hatching their eggs as something always eats them. Turkey poults are also rare to hatch for the same reason. This year we tried something different when we found both goose and turkey nests. We took some of the eggs and put them under a brooder hen in the chicken house. She readily adopted them as her own and sat on them until they hatched. Because the brooder hutches are off the floor, that first step for the newly hatched birds must have been quite a shock but they were evidently flexible and shock absorbent because we found them wandering around the chicken house and even in the yard following hatching. Best of all they were left alone by the other hens. This was so successful we hope to do it again next summer.

The Muscovy’s are one breed that needs no help in breeding. They are profligate and prolific. Some mothers hatched three batches of babies this year and two continued setting well into November, long after their eggs had frozen. When new batches were hatched, I’d take half of the babies and leave the other half with the mother, knowing their chances for survival were not good considering the number of predators such as foxes that love to eat the helpless little creatures.

I put my half under a heat lamp in a safe area until they are big enough to be out on their own, basically when their true feathers replace their down. However one mother was able to save most of her babies by taking them away from the pond, where the wild things come at night, and down to the creek where somehow she managed to save them. Four continue to stay with her and every day she brings them up to the pond so swim with the rest of the ducks and geese. But in the evening the four little ones follow her back down to the creek and safety.

Somehow she kept them alive even during our eight-inch pre-Halloween snow. She must have found shelter for herself and them, unlike the other mother with babies who did not survive the snow. I never saw them again but I fear they huddled around her as the snow got deeper and deeper and it’s possible all of them suffocated as snow covered them over. What a tragedy. What needless loss. A feeling I have about so much of life. It reminds me of a Noel Coward song when he says “things could have been organized better.”

Once again Kali dances her dance of death with strings of skulls around her neck and holding still bleeding heads in her multiple hands. Death is inescapable. “I am inescapable,” she says. But not too soon, I beg for my babies, not too soon.

5.

There is death which is unavoidable, like the deaths of all of our turkey poults who were hatched by our brooder hen. One by one they weakened and died, some with tumors on their bodies or faces. We did not know why they died; perhaps they caught some kind of virus. Each time we had to face the question of whether to kill them or not but as they never seemed to be in pain, just progressively weaker, we decided to let nature take its course though each death was hard.

Then there were the other deaths, the ones I caused. Let us go then, you and I, to the edge of that darkness from which none return. We were inundated in rats and there was the old saying that for every rat you see, twelve more are lurking in the background. We put out loose corn for the birds so it’s no wonder other creatures help themselves. A major problem with rats, aside from health concerns, is that they are so destructive. Aside from that I would be tempted to let them live but, as I say, they destroy so many different things, from chewing furniture to chewing linens. So I set out poison for them. The poison causes hemorrhages so they die of internal bleeding, not a pleasant way to go. After setting out the rat bait in places where our birds could not reach it, I noticed a rat sitting in the middle of the road, barely moving, slightly swaying from side to side and I knew immediately that he was dying and that I was causing both the pain he was obviously feeling and the death that was coming. At that moment I knew I was Kali for these creatures, and this was not the only dying rat I was to see during the following days. I was the bringer of death to these creatures whose only fault was in existing. And soon that would no longer be true. I went to the rat in the road to catch and kill him but he still had enough strength to run away to whatever lonely, miserable end awaited him.

A foot from where I am typing hangs a Currier and Ives print titled “Death of Washington, Dec. 14, A.D. 1799.” The recently deceased father of his country lies peacefully in bed, as though sleeping, surrounded by his family, his physician, a friend and the domestic staff. All grieve the loss. But no one grieves the passing of a rat, a turkey, a duck. They form an endless brigade marching into the maw of death. Christian and I mourn the loss of the creatures we know but there are far more who die in nature unknown, unmourned, and whether violently or gently, all go into that darkness from which none return. But as Kali also tells me, repeatedly until I learn it even if I don’t fully know what it means, everything changes, everything dies, but nothing is ever, ever lost.

A letter lies on the kitchen table, unopened during supper while we talk about the day and laugh at the comics in the newspaper. Later I’m still reading when I hear crying and turn around to see Christian standing at the sink, crying. I see he holds the letter, now opened, in his hand. I ask what’s wrong, dreading the answer which cannot be good. “Joanne is dead,” he says. His dearest friend from his first teaching days in Salt Lake. They were soul mates and remained in contact throughout the following years, even when separated by more than half a continent. We had known she was ill but had no idea she was dying. The letter sat there on the table while we laughed and enjoyed ourselves; Kali waiting for her moment to appear which she did, taking joy away and leaving us in shock. But I don’t think she enjoys her work. No, I think she does it because it must be done; it is the way of the world. And besides, it’s like she says, nothing is ever, ever lost.

Kali and the Poult

     This is a true story about a man, a snake and a turkey poult. At the end of the story, the snake and the poult will be dead.

     It’s also a story about the Hindu goddess Kali, the so-called goddess of death who wears a necklace of skulls while holding the severed head of a warrior. Kali is understandably fearsome. She dances on the body of her divine consort who willingly lets her wear out her driven passion on himself so this is a story of love as well.

     The poult and its brothers and sisters arrived in a cardboard box at the post office. I put them into a metal tub under a heat lamp. Baby turkeys need to be kept warm and dry or else they will die. For days I watched as they slowly grew larger, consuming water and food. I kept a screen over the tub so they would not jump or fly out. There came a point when it was time to move them to their next home, a bird house where they would have more room and could actually begin to fly inside. To prepare the poults for the rigors of being outdoors, I began turning off the heat lamp during the day so they could start hardening off. On the day before moving them, I went into the shanty and fed them. I came back an hour later to see something large inside the tub and noticed the turks were terrified. I looked closer and it was a six-foot black snake that had already killed one of the poults and was beginning the long process of eating it. I was horrified because I’d always taken care of the snakes in the winter house. I let them outdoors in the spring when they were ready to go outside. I kept them safe indoors because I knew they ate mice and snakes are also sacred to me. And this is how I was repaid. At least that’s what I kept screaming at the snake as I chopped it apart with poults flying out of the tub as I removed the screen so I could aim my axe at it. In my anger I inadvertently smashed the lamp and the ceramic food plate, one of my favorites of course.
     The snake and the poult were wrapped together in death as I took them outdoors and deposited their lifeless bodies near the road. I gathered the remaining poults, put them into a carrying cage and brought them to their new home. The next day I went back to see the snake and the poult. Flies were on the bodies and swarming around them. Maggots were already gutting the poult and the snake. Death alone was triumphant.
And that’s when I thought about Kali. I have several pictures of her in my house, as well as a sculpture. She is fearsome indeed, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, sword in hand, death triumphant. Yet she also has one hand raised in the traditional position of “no fear” so common to Hindu and Buddhist deities. How can such fearsome goddess also be saying “Don’t be afraid?” How can we not be afraid of what she is? Because Kali is more than the incarnation of death, she is also liberation from death. For Kali actually represents time which destroys all things. Only Kali herself stands outside time so by worshipping her, we stand in her protection. No fear.
     Kali is also a fearless warrior and one time the gods needed her to overcome the armies of approaching enemies. She went into battle and destroyed the warriors arranged against her, but then she went insane with blood lust and began killing the innocent as well, a story so common in war. The gods had no way of stopping her and it seemed as though as creation itself might be destroyed. Then her loving and beloved consort Shiva stepped forward and said he would stop her. So he laid on the ground and let her trample him until she wore herself out. At that moment her thirst and hunger were satiated and she regained sanity. What self-sacrificing love!
     I thought of Kali as I looked at the maggots eating the remains of my beloved poult and the snake that ate him. I foolishly blamed the snake for doing what snakes do, as in the story of the snake who was taken across a stream by a friendly creature only to be bitten by the snake halfway across, thereby ending with the death of them both. As the benefactor drowned, it asked the snake why it had bitten him considering he was helping the snake cross the river. “That’s what I do,” replied the snake. There was nothing personal to it, just as I was not at all involved in why the snake was eating my poult. I’ve seen black snakes crawl up tree trunks to find and eat baby birds. That’s what they do. The fact that I had helped the snake many times was nice but not relevant at this point. The snake was hungry; it heard the poults chirping away, followed the sound to its source and then had lunch. Nothing personal at all. I made it personal, but it wasn’t personal. The fact that I would not let the snake survive was my issue, my anger at what it had done. And now two creatures were dead, each one now food for new life as maggots ate their flesh. Kali supreme.
     So where was enlightenment in all this? For Kali is nothing if not a beacon for enlightenment. The dark goddess summons those who follow her, offering redemption from the illusion of existence, the illusion that things are permanent when actually all is smoke and mirrors. Beyond the illusion of death is the true permanence of the spirit that does not die. Beyond time, which is Kali’s realm, is the timeless towards which she points the way if we only we will follow. Kali harvests death, the snake and the poult. Beyond them, beyond even the maggots feasting on them, is another realm that is hard to see as we try to look through a glass darkly, hoping to spot glimpses of a world beyond. But that world beyond is still the world here and now. And what Kali says is “Do not fear for nothing is lost. No, nothing is ever lost.”

　

　I turn away from the entwined bodies of snake and poult which now have become a terrible new creature formed from both. In killing the snake I have shattered the cycle of which she and the poult were part. I could not let the poult die unavenged. I could not let the snake survive and so have added to the price of its hunger. Kali seeks victims until I lay down and let her dance on me.

My Little Amazon

In his movie Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen says the purpose of an artist is to create meaning for meaningless existence. My purpose now is somewhat different: I am creating meaning for a meaningless death.

She was my little Amazon, the Muscovy duckling that wasn’t even supposed to be alive. I put her chances for survival at 50/50 and we’d already had one duckling not only survive but thrive after I took him out of his shell against Bro. Christian’s better judgment.
Christian always said I should not help any bird get out of its shell because only by forcing its way out would it become strong enough to survive. The corollary being any bird that died in its shell was too weak to survive. But I could not face having her die cold and wet in such dark surroundings, waded up in a ball. No, even if she were to die, I wanted her to be warm and dry, all fluffed out and in a safe place. But safety, it turned out, was relative.
As I said, I’d already had success keeping one baby duckling alive after its mother abandoned the nest with her firstborn, leaving several eggs behind. Only one showed any sign of life, as we saw and heard chipping away from the inside as it tried to break through the shell. When it seemed to give up, I took matters into my own hands, as I am wont to do, and carefully broke open the shell to reveal the folded up, wet duckling inside. I brought it into the summer house where I already had a metal tub and a heat lamp, its new mother, set up. Carefully drying it off, I laid it under the lamp and within an hour it was fully dry, a little yellow fuzz ball with delicate pads for feet and a small head with two tiny black dots for eyes, already making duck sounds.
One of the great joys in having baby birds is giving them their first drink of water and their first taste of food. After that, they catch on quickly. Soon the little guy was running around the tub. The duckling seemed to be male in the same way my little Amazon seemed to be female, though it was impossible at that age for us to tell for certain. Amazingly, he lived and after a week we moved him over to the duck house where we already had his mother and brothers and sisters. In his case, intruding into nature’s scheme paid off but, as I said, I put the chances at 50/50 and the odds came up against us with the second duckling.
We found another nest with several eggs left unhatched when the mother took those that had already hatched down to the pond where I proceeded to take a swim and catch them so they wouldn’t be eaten by wild animals as they inevitably were if we left them alone. As with the first batch, we found one egg with signs of life, a small hole appearing in the shell that slowly grew larger, perhaps no more than half an inch across, then the duckling stopped pecking at the shell, possibly already worn out from exertion. I waited for several hours to see what would happen but there was no more pecking and, again, I grew worried and did not want the duckling to die wet and cold in the darkness of its shell. So once again I tempted fate by carefully picking open the shell and carefully unwrapping the duckling, amazed at how such a living creature could actually fit inside such a small shell.
As with the first duckling, I carefully wiped this one off but she was terribly weak. Again, this baby seemed female to me. Her head hung down the same way it had in the shell. I could tell she was a preemie but did not realize she had a fatal flaw that would end in her death: the part of her body where the egg sack was attached was open. Maybe it is in all baby birds, I don’t know, but she had a small hole in her belly that I just assumed would close up with time. I assumed it would close up, remember that word because it came back to haunt me.
She was terribly weak but under the heat lamp she dried out and fluffed out into a beautiful yellow baby chick. Again I had the thrill of giving her her first water but she barely took any of it and trying to get her to eat was useless, she was just too weak.
Instead of being able to stand on her own two padded feet and begin walking, she lay under the lamp, unable to lift her head. I knew she needed stimulation, touch, to activate her body and prevent her from dying. I began stroking her back and she responded to that, moving her body and eventually, slowly, getting up on her short little feet, wobbly, head still bowed over, learning to stand and taking hesitant first steps. Everything was delayed with her, development was slow. I would lift her up and hold a cup of water to her beak. By now she knew what it was and began to actively drink, which encouraged me. Slowly, very slowly, over several days, she began to stand on her own. I kept stroking her and, maybe because she didn’t like being stroked, she started to move away, slowly at first but as I continued stroking her, she began to move faster to the point where she would run around the tub and finally, to my great relief and encouragement, began trying to jump out of the tub to get away.
Eating was still difficult. It seemed that even the crumbled food was too hard for her to chew and swallow. I pinched the already small crumbles between my fingers to make them even finer and added small amounts of water to soften them even more. Now, as I put her beak close to the food, she began taking in at least small amounts. After several days her head raised up at last and she seemed to recover from her early birth. I began leaving a small cup of water and a small plate of dampened food for her to eat while I was not there. In retrospect this may not have been a good idea as it may have kept her belly damp, but then there was still that open wound in her belly that I forgot about because her yellow fuzz covered everything and I just assumed, again that terrible word, that things were fine.
To get her to exercise, I took her out of the tub and let her run around the room. She was up in the attic and had the floor to herself. I would stroke her back and she would run and run around the room. She was so full of life and was daily getting stronger. I started calling her my little Amazon, remarking on her growing strength. I said she would have muscles on muscles which would scare off half the boys and attract the other half. “My little Amazon,” I kept calling her and, terrible presumption, started planning for when I would finally be able to introduce her back into her home flock of mother, brothers and sisters in the duck house where all the babies are kept until they get their full white feathers and are large enough to survive on their own.
As I said, I was already planning for her future, not realizing she didn’t have one. I had already tempted fate by saving one duckling. In terms of percentages alone, this next one was doomed. But for now that did not seem to be the case as I joyfully played morning and evening with her. She was the delight of my life. I could not believe how happy such a small creature could make me. Needless to say, I loved her.
The evenings were best, that was our special time together when, after a long day, I could finally relax with her. One evening I noticed she kept trying to scratch her belly, which I thought was a good sign that she was mature enough to be concerned about mites and other irritations. But the cause was more than mites, and much more serious than an irritation.
It was the next morning when I went to see her and she was on her back, struggling to get up. I noticed her bottom was damp and matted. It had been matted since birth, actually, and I had tried to tease apart the tangled yellow fuzz to clean it out but stopped when I realized I was hurting her.
Now I closely inspected to find out just what was going on when I saw them, a tangled, teaming mass of maggots. Somehow, a single fly had gotten to her and laid her eggs in the still open wound of my preemie. I screamed and took her downstairs to the sink where I washed them off and, to my dismay, found how easy it was to clean the impacted, matted mass with running water when I had given up trying to clean it with my fingers alone. Why, I asked myself, hadn’t I thought about doing this when she was just hatched? Things would have been so much easier if she had been cleaned up from the beginning. But my thoughts then had been to keep her dry, not to wash her down and get her wet all over again; that was the opposite of what I had wanted for her. But now I blamed myself for the maggots that were on her. I also blamed myself for the fly that had been able to land on her and infest her with her eggs. There had not been a problem with flies in the summer kitchen. Never had I thought one might lay eggs on her.
I carefully washed her clean and had a chance to more closely inspect her wound now that the feathers were matted. What I saw horrified me. The maggots weren’t all gone. In fact, they were living inside her. They came crawling out of her belly wound, living just under her skin and eating her muscles, eating her alive. Their wriggling, white tubes with black teeth at the front were crawling out from inside her body, trying to reach the air as they needed air to breathe. This was more than I could bear; they were inside my angel’s body cavity; they were killing her.
I screamed for Brother Christian and kept screaming. He came over from his house in a panic as I showed him the horror of what was happening. He loved our little angel as well but kept his head and realized we had to get the maggots out of her. He started picking at them with his finger nails but his fingers were too large for the tiny maggots and he couldn’t see them well either. With my near-sightedness, I could see them closely and I used the blunt end of a needle to pry them out from inside her. When I seemed to have killed most of them, he checked her out all over.
“Oh no,” he said, “They’re all over her.” Not just in her belly wound; they had started eating around her anus as well. “There’s a huge colony of them,” he said, as again he tried to pick them out with his fingers but I ended up again using a needle to scrape them off as they came out from inside her body. Finally, finally, it seemed that we had all of them out. We dried her off. The stress had been very difficult for her. Her head went down as it had when she first came out of the shell. I could tell she was regressing and losing all of her progress. Still, we dried her off as best we could and kept her under the heat lamp, hoping she would recover.
Later in the day she seemed her old self, getting up and walking around as she had formerly. But that evening I inspected her again and, again, I found new masses of tiny maggots both in her belly wound and around her bottom. Once again I screamed for Christian and once again he came over. Once again I used the needle to get them out. I dunked her in warm water trying to shut off the maggots’ air supply and force them out of her body. They kept coming out of her. It was one of the most horrible scenes I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some pretty horrible things during our years of working with animals; everyone has who works with animals.
“I have to kill her,” I told Christian; “She’ll never survive this.”
But he convinced me to let her alone, to let her recover overnight as, once again, it seemed we had gotten out all of the maggots. My little Amazon was terribly weak but, once again, we dried her off and let her recover from the stress. Once again she fluffed out and became the beautiful little duckling we loved so much, and so I went off to bed.
The next morning she was once again wet on her bottom. Once again I held her close to my nearsighted eye and, to my horror, realized her wound was much larger now; that maggots had been eating her through the night and now I could actually see her internal organs. Not thinking she had any chance for survival, once again Christian and I tried to clean out all of the remaining maggots. There were very few by now and I thought that somehow my strong girl just might pull through, despite the massive size of her gaping wound. I thought just somehow she might pull it off even though we almost lost her as she went limp as we were pulling out the maggots and we had to revive her. Once again we left her under the heat lamp to recover from the stress of her ongoing ordeal.
Several hours later I went to the summer house to check on her and saw Brother Christian coming out with a wrapped-up newspaper page in his hand. There were tears in his eyes and I knew our little Amazon was dead. “She just couldn’t stand the stress,” he said. I carefully unwrapped the paper and there she was, my little Amazon, with her dead eyes still open, with that quizzical look I’ve seen so many times on so many faces, that quizzical look at the face of death of itself, the look that asks the unanswerable question, “What’s happening to me?” I imagine wartime medics in Iraq and Afghanistan see that look all the time in the eyes of dying soldiers. It’s not just a human look, a human act in the fact of the unknown, but an act of all sentient creatures faced with the unknowable, the unbelievable. I saw it on my mother’s face as she lay dying. And I see it again on the face of my little Amazon.
“They’re not going to have her,” said Christian. “I won’t let the maggots have her in death. We’re going to cremate her.”
I fetched a beautiful piece of Indian silk with a rainbow of color and texture. I carefully wrapped her slight body in it. Christian had a piece of white lace for the final, outer wrapping, white for the innocent she was.
We took her body and laid it on the funeral pyre. Christian started the fire and quite quickly the lace and silk were engulfed in flame. I thought I could hear the swelling and popping of the maggots as the heat reached them inside her, killing them as they had killed my baby. Grim satisfaction it was knowing they were boiling and dying as she turned into smoke and ash, purified of pain and her mortal coil that had proved deficient at keeping her alive in the face of such monstrosity. Now she was free as her spirit soared into the sky.
“Nothing is ever lost,” I heard. “No, nothing is ever lost.”
The smoke rose; our baby was free at last. She had given us so much love, so much joy in such a brief period of time. Had I been wrong in trying to keep her alive? Should I have let her die in her shell, in the cold, dark, dampness of her shell? I didn’t believe that; I couldn’t believe that. I saw her running around the attic floor, happy in her existence which was far, far too brief. But for a brief time she enjoyed being alive and, for a brief time, her existence gave joy to ours.