oh death

This is the time of year when things that are ready to die go ahead and check out. A friend's dog went from happily cleaning the breakfast dishes to dead in the span of a short afternoon. Another friend's cat, also not too long after breakfast, passed in a similar way. Healthy, then just gone. In body, anyway.

Here at the garden we've been cleaning out old bee hives that had died out over the summer. We discovered American Foul Brood in some of them, which we know two of our hives had died from earlier in the summer. To prevent its spread in our apiary, we must burn all the old wooden frames and get rid of the leftover comb. We've been keeping our little chiminea going for the past week, and have melted down much of the old comb into wax for candles and salves. We'll have to blowtorch the old boxes to be sure that the disease does not carry on, and we'll also have to remove the comb and frame from the three hives that are still living. These means destroying all the brood (baby bees) and honey and pollen stores. Not good. But the only other option is treating with antibiotics for as long as we keep bees here. Not organic, nor a healthy way to manage the hives, in my opinion. It would be similar to the sub-clinical doses that most dairy cattle receive. The colonies might survive if we successfully transfer the queen and a good contingency of workers to new equipment.

After clearing out the last of the old bee equipment, this raccoon stumbled out near the compost piles and collapsed as I was getting some worms out of the bins today. Probably infected with rabies, too weak to get back up, it curled up in the sun, eyed me frankly for a moment, and put its head down. Later, another garden visitor spotted it and called animal control. I was hoping it would be allowed to pass peacefully overnight, but by the time I returned from my after school program, it had been collected. Probably the safer option, but not a graceful way to go.

So we'll start this spring with fresh bee equipment, and one less raccoon. The chickens will be safer I suppose. I wonder if it's the same raccoon that leaves tidy little tracks in the sand by the creek?

what a chicken knows

My nephews came to "work" at the garden this week. At 3 1/2 and 4 1/2, they are proud to help where they can. Digging holes in the sandbox is part of their job. We also spent some time digging up worms in the worm bins, marveling at the stink of the putrid bin with bad drainage, and the sheer masses of worms squirming within. After covering the worms back up, we harvested some chickweed to add to our leftover noodles and went to feed the chickens.

As we watched the chickens snatch up the noodles from the ground and each others' beaks, my younger nephew observed that the chickens must think the noodles are worms. Probably so. And the older one chimed in with the question: "Kyla, does a chicken know it's a chicken?"

Hmm. Good question. They know perfectly well how to be chickens--how to scratch, how to lay eggs, how to communicate in their own chicken way. And the rooster didn't need any lessons on his job--he stands proudly over the flock, making sure they all get to eat while he watches for dangers (among which I am unfortunately included--but that's another story).

The ego must certainly belong to humans more so than the rest of our animal family. If chickens worried about whether or not they were good chickens or bad chickens, lonely chickens or poor chickens, they wouldn't have time to eat and preen and sleep and cluck. Or they might preen when they should be eating, or eat when they should be sleeping.

I wonder if the chickens at the garden experience themselves not as individuals, but as part of the garden community. Not separate from the worms they tug out of the earth or even the humans that come to feed them and witness their antics, but of a piece with their small world.
Or do they think "I am a chicken, and I am eating a worm, and those people are watching me"?

I didn't get a chance to answer my nephew--by the time I finished thinking about the question, he had moved on to something else. But I think a chicken must know that it is a chicken, and also that it would mean nothing to be a chicken were there not also a world to live within, full of chicken food and chicken shelter, eggs and hawks. I don't know if this constitutes an ego, but if it does, it is ego in its most healthy expression--a knowledge of self in context of community.